Councils are telling you how they’ll pay for enforcement and you should listen

The Renters’ Rights Act has been in force for just over five weeks. In that time, one council has publicly admitted it will need to fund enforcement through the fines it collects from landlords.

Another has updated its policy to allow formal enforcement without a warning letter first. And the government has told every local housing authority in England that it now has a statutory duty to act when it suspects non-compliance.

None of this is hidden. It is published on council websites, in parliamentary answers, and in GOV.UK guidance. If you manage your own properties, you should be reading it.

The Funding Picture

In April 2026, the government allocated £41.12 million in new burdens funding to local councils for enforcement of the Renters’ Rights Act. That followed an earlier allocation of £18.2 million in November 2025, bringing the total to just over £60 million across all 317 local housing authorities in England (GOV.UK, 14 April 2026).

Those numbers sound significant until you divide them. Spread across 317 authorities, the average allocation is roughly £130,000 per council for the year. That covers maybe two or three enforcement officers, before you account for legal costs, tribunal work, and administration.

Bath and North East Somerset Council (BNES) said the quiet part out loud at a recent scrutiny panel meeting. Matt McCabe, the cabinet member responsible for housing, told councillors: “Local authorities now have an enforcement function, but there is not necessarily any money for that. There is some transition money, but in future, it will be that we will have to supplement from prosecutions. Which is not a sensible way forward in my view.” The chair of the scrutiny panel, Andy Wait, described it as “payment by results, which is possibly not the right image that you need to put across” (Somerset Live, reported June 2026).

B&NES is not an outlier. It is one of the first councils to say publicly what the funding model makes likely for many authorities: enforcement activity generates fine revenue, and fine revenue funds further enforcement activity.

The Statutory Duty Has Changed Everything

Before the Renters’ Rights Act, councils operated under the Regulators’ Code, which generally encouraged informal resolution before escalating to formal action. Advisory letters, phone calls, and compliance deadlines were the norm.

Section 107 of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 replaced that approach with a statutory duty. Every local housing authority in England must now enforce the landlord legislation in its area. The GOV.UK enforcement guidance published in November 2025 puts it plainly: “It is the duty of every housing authority in England to enforce these new provisions in its area” (GOV.UK, Enforcement of the new tenancy system under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025).

Several councils drafting new enforcement policies for 2026 have been explicit about what this shift means. Pendle Council’s cabinet report stated that “the Regulators’ Code can no longer be relied upon to justify informal action as the starting point for compliance under the Renters’ Rights Act.” Cheltenham Borough Council’s consultation on its updated enforcement policy described s.107 as “a fundamental shift from the enforcement position set out in the Regulators’ Code.”

In a written parliamentary answer, Baroness Taylor of Stevenage confirmed the intention behind this: “The Renters’ Rights Act places a new duty on local housing authorities to take enforcement action where they suspect non-compliance” (Property118, 26 May 2026).

And councils are now required, under Section 110 of the Act, to report their enforcement activity to the Secretary of State. That creates a pressure to demonstrate that the duty is being fulfilled, not just acknowledged.

Warning Letters Are Not Guaranteed

Phil Turtle, a director of Landlord Licensing and Defence, flagged a practical consequence of these changes in May 2026. He pointed to Portsmouth City Council’s updated enforcement policy as typical of the new approach, noting that it states “formal enforcement may now be taken more quickly, without a warning in some cases, especially where there are serious risks, clear legal breaches or repeat issues” (Property Investor Today, May 2026).

In plain terms: a council officer who identifies a breach may now move straight to a notice of intent for a civil penalty, without the informal advisory step that many landlords have historically relied on.

That does not mean every council will take that approach with every case. Enforcement still has to be proportionate, and councils must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before imposing a civil penalty for an offence (or to the same standard for breaches under the new framework). But the legal safety net of “they’ll warn me first” is no longer something a landlord can count on.

What the Penalties Actually Look Like

The statutory guidance on civil penalties, published by MHCLG in November 2025, sets out starting points for fines. These are not maximums. They are the figures councils are told to begin from before adjusting up or down based on the circumstances.

Some examples from the guidance: failing to provide the Written Statement of Terms carries a starting point of £4,000. Failing to state the rent in a property advert starts at £3,000. Relying on a possession ground the landlord does not reasonably believe can be established starts at £6,000. Re-letting a property within the restricted period after using a sale or moving ground starts at £25,000. A breach of a banning order starts at £35,000 (GOV.UK, Civil penalties under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and other housing legislation).

The maximum for a breach is £7,000. The maximum for an offence is £40,000. If a breach continues for more than 28 days after a civil penalty has been imposed, it may be treated as a continuing offence, which attracts the higher ceiling.

Councils can also pursue criminal prosecution in the magistrates’ court as an alternative to civil penalties, where the fines are unlimited.

What This Means in Practice

None of this changes what a landlord actually has to do. The obligations under the Renters’ Rights Act are the same regardless of how aggressively your local council enforces them. But it changes the practical risk of getting something wrong.

A landlord who has every certificate in date, every notice correctly served, and a clear record of when they did it is not going to be the target of a council looking to justify its enforcement budget. A landlord who relies on memory, scattered emails, and a filing cabinet they last opened in 2023 is a different story.

The question is not whether you are compliant. It is whether you can prove it. When a council officer asks to see your records, the quality and completeness of what you produce is the first thing that shapes their decision about whether to proceed informally or formally.

In my view, the landlords who will navigate this well are the ones who treat compliance documentation as routine operational practice rather than something to scramble for when a letter arrives. That means knowing when every certificate expires, keeping dated copies of every notice served, and maintaining a record of what was sent, when, and how.

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The enforcement landscape has shifted. The obligations have not changed, but the consequences of falling short of them have. If you can produce a complete, dated compliance trail for every tenancy you manage, you are ahead of most of the sector right now. If you cannot, the time to fix that is before a council officer asks, not after.

Has your local council published an updated enforcement policy yet? Have you had any contact from your authority since 1 May? For those managing without an agent, how are you keeping your records?

Not sure where your gaps are? LLCR’s free compliance checker runs through every legal requirement for your tenancy in under two minutes.

Tauhid Islam is a property law paralegal qualifying as a solicitor. He works on tenancy, possession, and compliance matters daily, and founded LLCR, the Landlord Compliance Register, to give self-managing landlords in England a single place to track every deadline, certificate, and document the law requires of them.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Always seek independent legal advice for your specific situation.