Could your rent increase survive a tribunal challenge?

As we all know, the Renters Rights Act 2025 has created major problems for landlords, and some are already showing up.

In particular, landlords are facing issues with setting and increasing the property rent.

The problems with rent

Prior to 1 May 2026, landlords were able to increase rent by:

• Agreement (normally by getting the tenant to sign a new tenancy agreement or renewal form)
• A ‘rent review’ clause in their tenancy agreement, or
• The statutory rent increase procedure in s13 of the Housing Act 1988.

The Renters’ Rights Act abolished the first two for assured periodic tenancies (APTs), so now, if landlords want to increase their rent, they have no alternative but to use the statutory rent increase procedure.

The problem with this (for landlords) is that tenants can challenge this by applying to the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) for them to ‘determine an open market rent’.  The FTT can then

• Reduce the rent if they consider the landlord’s rent is above the market rate, or
• Confirm the landlord’s rent if they consider that it either accurately reflects the market rent or is below the market rent.

Note that they cannot increase the rent.  So, the landlord’s rent figure is the highest rent that can be set.

There are two situations where tenants can apply for an open market rent determination:

• During the first six months of a new tenancy, and
• Before the start of a new rent set in a landlord’s Form 4A (the official form used to increase rents under the s13 procedure).

This means landlords need to be careful not only when drafting their Form 4A, but also when setting the rent at the start of the tenancy.

Researching and finding the open market rent

In order to deter tenants from applying for an open market rent in the first place or to be able to defend your rent if they do, it is important that landlords are able to provide the tribunal with evidence to support the rent set.

To do this, landlords need to provide evidence of rents actually agreed for similar properties and explain why the comparable properties they cite are relevant to their property.

They will need to do this with reference to their own property – for example, its size, type, condition, facilities and the like.

This is not something that most landlords have had to do in the past, and many are finding it a challenge. This is illustrated by this Property118 post, which highlights the problems caused by landlords providing inadequate evidence to tribunals.

It is for this reason that I have developed the Landlord Law Market Rent and Tribunal Kit.

The Landlord Law Market Rent and Tribunal Kit

This is available free of charge to Landlord Law members (although Parts 2 and 3 on tribunal procedure are only available to our Business Level members).

The kit is in five parts:

• Part 1 looks at researching and setting your rent
• Part 2 looks at dealing with tribunal challenges
• Part 3 considers appeals (in outline)
• Part 4 is still in development but will cover rents for common law and Rent Act protected tenancies
• Part 5 is the resources section, with links to relevant tribunal decisions, kit downloads, government guidance, official resources, and online market rent tools.

There is also an introduction page which is available to non-members.

Hopefully this kit will demystify the new rental rules and help landlords when setting rents and dealing with challenges.

Free additional help with our Daily Tips

This is another new initiative.  You can now sign up to get a Landlord Law daily tip sent to you every morning.

The tips will include reviews of new tribunal decisions, explaining how they affect landlords and the new rent procedures.

You can sign up to the free tips here.

Tessa Shepperson.

Tessa is a specialist landlord and tenant lawyer and runs the Landlord Law online information service at www.landlordlaw.co.uk.  You can sign up to her free weekly bulletin (and get a free ebook) at www.landlordlaw.co.uk/bulletin.