Property compliance for landlords and letting agents, run as a system

The obligations, in one map

Every rented home in England carries the same core set of duties. They are not hard to understand individually. The difficulty is that they run on different clocks, and a portfolio multiplies every clock by the number of properties. Sorted by cadence, the map looks like this.

Annual

• Gas safety check by a Gas Safe registered engineer, recorded on a CP12. This only applies where the property has a gas or LPG appliance. The record goes to existing tenants within 28 days of the check, and to new tenants at the start of the tenancy.
• Rent increases, at most once a year, through the revised section 13 procedure with at least two months' notice.
• Client account audit, for letting agents that hold client money.
• PRS Database fee, once registration reaches your region: registration is mandatory and carries an annual fee.

Five-yearly

• EICR, the electrical installation condition report, every five years by a qualified person. A copy goes to existing tenants within 28 days and to new tenants before they move in.

Ten-yearly

• EPC, valid for ten years, and it must be provided to the tenant.
• Cost cap exemptions under the minimum energy efficiency rules, which are valid for ten years once registered.

Per tenancy

• Smoke alarms: at least one on every storey containing living accommodation, tested on the day a new tenancy starts.
• Carbon monoxide alarms: required in any room containing a fixed combustion appliance, excluding gas cookers. That covers gas, LPG, oil and solid fuel appliances.
• Right to Rent: checks before the tenancy starts, in England, with copies retained and follow-up checks for time-limited permission.
• Deposits: protected in a government-approved scheme within 30 days, with the prescribed information served.
• Certificates to the tenant: the gas safety record, the EICR and the EPC, each on its own timing rule.

Continuous

• Renters' Rights Act conduct: no rental bidding, no more than one month's rent in advance, no discrimination against renters with children or receiving benefits, and a written pet request considered within 28 days with a valid reason for any refusal.
• Agency obligations, for letting agents: client money protection scheme membership, membership of a government-approved redress scheme, and material information under Parts A, B and C of the National Trading Standards guidance.

What changed in 2026, and what is coming

Four changes matter, and they sit at very different stages. Treating them as one "new rules" bucket is how landlords end up either panicking about things that are not law yet or ignoring things that already are.

The Renters' Rights Act, phase 1: in force since 1 May 2026

Section 21 "no fault" evictions are abolished. Assured Periodic Tenancies replace fixed terms, tenants can stay until a valid section 8 ground applies, and a tenant ends the tenancy with two months' notice. Rent can rise once a year only, through the revised section 13 procedure with at least two months' notice. Rental bidding is banned and no more than one month's rent can be taken in advance.

Enforcement has teeth. Local authority enforcement is strengthened, civil penalties are expanded, and rent repayment orders are extended to superior landlords with the maximum penalty doubled. The full operational picture is in the Renters' Rights Act checklist.

The PRS Database: from late 2026

Registration becomes mandatory for private rented sector landlords, rolled out region by region from late 2026, with an annual fee. The database asks for per-property data: landlord contact details, property details, occupancy, and safety information covering gas, electric and energy performance certificates. That last item is where unprepared portfolios will struggle. See the PRS Database guide.

EPC C by 1 October 2030

Private rented homes in England and Wales must reach EPC C or equivalent by 1 October 2030. Landlords must invest up to £10,000 per property, and if the property still falls short a cost cap exemption can be registered, valid for ten years. A property with an EER of C or above on an EPC obtained before 1 October 2029 is treated as compliant until that EPC expires. The maximum civil penalty is £30,000 per property per breach. Spending from 1 October 2025 counts towards the cap, so receipts matter now. Until the higher standard applies, the minimum remains E. Details in the EPC C by 2030 guide.

Awaab's Law: expected, not yet law for private landlords

Awaab's Law has applied in social housing since 27 October 2025: hazards investigated within 14 days, repairs started within a further 7 days, emergencies dealt with within 24 hours. Extension to the private rented sector is expected from 2027, but the implementation date is subject to consultation. It is not a private landlord duty today. It is, however, a good reason to make sure every repair report already carries a date, a status and evidence of completion.

Why compliance records fail

Most landlords and agencies we speak to are not careless. The engineer visits, the alarms get pressed, the deposit gets protected. What fails is the record of it. A portfolio of 150 properties at 9 checks each is 1,350 obligations a year before renewals, repairs and inspections. That is a data problem, not a diligence problem.

The failure modes repeat:

• Evidence not captured at source. A photo sits in someone's camera roll with no reliable time, no place and no link to the property. A tick in a spreadsheet proves someone intended to check, not that the check happened.
• "Not applicable" with no reason. A checklist that lets someone tick NA without saying why cannot survive an inspection. An all-electric flat genuinely has no gas safety requirement; the record has to say that is the reason.
• Rules applied to the floor plan, not the law. Smoke alarms are per storey with living accommodation, not per line on a floor plan, and a storage-only loft is not a storey with living accommodation. CO alarms are per room with a fixed combustion appliance, and a gas hob is not one.
• Renewals tracked in a diary. A diary reminds one person on one date. When that person is on holiday, or the engineer does not turn up, nothing escalates.
• One property's pack in three places. The certificate is in email, the date is in a spreadsheet, the signed prescribed information is in a filing cabinet. Answering a simple question takes an afternoon.

The compliance evidence guide goes deeper on what makes a record stand up.

The three systems that do the work

A working compliance setup is three systems sharing one record per property. Each can be built on its own, but they are designed to meet.

Evidence capture

Checks are recorded in the app at the moment they happen, stamped with time and location and bound to the property and the specific device. When an item does not apply, the record demands a reason. The compliance evidence system.

Renewal tracking

Every certificate carries a date, an owner and a status, and the system chases ahead of expiry and escalates when a date passes. The same record produces the per-property data the PRS Database will ask for. Certificate renewal tracking.

Repairs reporting and triage

Tenants report repairs with photos into one queue rather than a text thread, and each job closes with completion evidence. It sits inside the wider admin layer alongside tenant communication and landlord reporting. Compliance admin automation.

What a working system looks like week to week

The test of a compliance system is not the dashboard. It is whether the ordinary week gets easier. In a portfolio running on one record, the rhythm looks something like this.

• Start of the week: one view of what expires inside your chosen lead time, what is overdue, and who owns each item. Overdue items are already escalated; nobody has to notice them.
• Contractor bookings: gas and electrical visits are booked from the same record that tracks the date, and the new certificate lands back against the property when the job is done.
• Tenancy starts: each new tenancy prompts the day-one alarm tests, the certificates owed to the tenant and the deposit deadline. The tests are captured as evidence on the day, not ticked later.
• Repairs: new reports arrive with photos, are triaged by urgency, and close only with evidence that the work is done.
• Rent and notices: the section 13 diary shows which tenancies are eligible for a review and when two months' notice would need to go out.
• Month end: a landlord or portfolio report is generated from the record rather than assembled by hand.

None of that needs anyone to be unusually organised. It needs the record to be the place where the work happens, rather than a place where someone writes it up afterwards.

How this gets built

Every build is bespoke, because portfolios are not alike: a landlord with eight houses and an agency with three hundred managed units carry different risks. The sequence is the same.

1. Discovery. A structured conversation that maps your portfolio, your obligations and where the records currently live. You leave with a costed view, whether we build or not.
2. Schema first. Before any screens, we model the record: property, storey, room, device, obligation, evidence, renewal, tenancy. Getting this right is what makes "per storey, per room" enforceable rather than advisory.
3. Integrations. Property and tenancy data is read from the software you already run where it allows it, or imported from your spreadsheets where it does not.
4. The evidence standard. We agree what counts as proof for each check, including when video is required and what an acceptable not-applicable reason looks like, and the system enforces it.
5. Rollout. A small set of properties first, used by the people who do the checks, then the rest of the portfolio once the record matches reality.
6. Ownership. You own the code and the data. The system is documented and handed over, not rented back to you.

What we will not claim

We have built a compliance system for a lettings business: renewal tracking, evidence capture with time and location stamping, device-level records, reasoned not-applicable entries and repairs intake. It has not been deployed yet. So there are no live property compliance results to report, and we will not invent any. When we describe what these systems do, we are describing built capability, not a client outcome.

Our live property work is with Thermova, a renewables installer, where a bulk EPC engine matches a whole property portfolio against the national register in minutes, against a reported day of manual lookups. That is EPC and property operations work, and it is where our experience of portfolio data comes from.

We are also not your solicitor. These pages summarise obligations for rented homes in England as published by government; they are not legal advice, and a system does not make you compliant. It makes your compliance visible.