The Renters' Rights Act 2025, explained for landlords

Tenancies are periodic. Every assured shorthold tenancy converted on 1 May 2026 and no new tenancy can carry a fixed term. Rent periods must be monthly.

Section 21 is gone. The no-fault route no longer exists, and every Section 21 reference in an existing agreement is dead text.

Rent rises only by Section 13. Contractual rent review clauses, including RPI and CPI-linked and fixed annual uplifts, are void in private assured tenancies. Form 4A, once per 52 weeks, two months' notice.

The Section 8 grounds were rebuilt. Thirty-seven of them, with new grounds for sale and for a superior lease ending, a serious-arrears threshold raised from two months to three, and notice periods rewritten across the board.

Advance rent is capped at one month. This closed the practice of asking for six or twelve months up front in place of a guarantor.

Pets became a right to request. A blanket ban has no effect. You have 28 days to respond in writing and you need reasonable grounds tied to the specific property and animal to refuse.

Some of what circulated during the Bill's passage did not survive into the Act, and citing it will cost you.

Ground 8A does not exist. It was in the Renters (Reform) Bill and is not in the enacted Act. A notice citing it is defective.

There is no deemed consent for pets. Several secondary sources say consent is automatically granted if you miss the 28 days. The Act contains no such provision. Missing the deadline breaches an implied term and the tenant's remedy is specific performance under Section 16B(5) or a complaint to the Private Rented Sector Ombudsman.

Pet damage insurance was removed. It was in the Bill and was taken out at Lords Report Stage. Requiring it would be a prohibited payment under the Tenant Fees Act 2019. A separate pet deposit amendment was rejected, so the five-week deposit cap remains the only protection.

Ground 3, holiday accommodation, was repealed and Ground 16 was renumbered as mandatory Ground 5C.

Nothing about the conversion required you to act, which is exactly why so many landlords have not. The exposure is not that the old agreement is invalid — it is that your tenant is holding a document that says things the law no longer permits, and that gap is argued against you in any dispute.

Reissue the tenancy agreement as a periodic one. Check that no rent increase has been taken under a review clause since 1 May 2026, because that increase was not lawfully imposed. Make sure the Government Information Sheet went out to every existing tenant. Replace any Section 21 notice work in progress with a Section 8 ground.

If you are not sure where you stand, the readiness checker walks through it in about two minutes and tells you which documents to reissue.