Councils given power to penalise landlords for unenforceable tenancy clauses

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 11/01/2026 – 13:24
Glanacc

“I think I am correct in that existing ASTs wont have to be re-issued, any ‘made up’ clauses will simply become unenforcable. ”

Correct. Existing ASTs will automatically convert, meaning landlords won’t issue new fixed-term ASTs, but will manage rolling tenancies with new rules, including longer notice periods for landlords.

Reply to the comment left by Judith Wordsworth at 11/01/2026 – 14:47
Good idea — if only you could avoid the emergency powers the government would invoke at the stroke of a minister’s pen to halt any possession action overnight. The PRS and its representative bodies have comprehensively let the industry down. The climb back will be long, and it is far from clear that the sector even has the stomach for it.

On the road to the socialist dream, governments allow new industries to develop until they reach critical mass. Once established, the industry is captured, then value is steadily extracted through regulation and taxation until control is complete.

Farmers, doctors, train drivers and others organised, stood together, and enforced their rights and interests. The PRS, by contrast, was shamed into silence. Landlords were made to feel guilty for existing, while their representative bodies proved either incapable of exposing the wider strategy, asleep at the wheel, or simply too busy collecting membership fees to care.

Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at 11/01/2026 – 17:02
There aren’t many representative bodies for landlords, possibly because the majority of them only have 1 or 2 properties – it’s estimated there are around 2.4 million landlords.

The NRLA has around 120,000 registered members (Thats at least a conservative income of £12m a year .. what do they do with it all).

There is not a snowballs chance in hell ANY landlord organisation will garner enough members to make any significant influence on the government. Yes, the NRLA and others campaign and appear to have small wins, but in the end the government will do what it wants to do.

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 11/01/2026 – 18:12
It U turned on farmers.

Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at 11/01/2026 – 11:47
“Routine revenue raising ”
Unlikely.

In two year’s time any LL still trying to increase rents automatically by CPI or proposing a new tenancy agreement of 12 months just hasn’t been paying attention to all the media and other publicity about RRA.

To repeat – councils dont have access to your tenancy agreement and will only become aware of an unenforceable clause such as an automatic CPI increase when an ignorant LL tries to enforce it and the tenant complains

After a recent MP landlord licensing case every sensible LL will have checked if they needed a license.

In the next year when somebody who. somehow hasn’t heard of RRA mistakenly tries to automatically increase rent by cpi because that’s what their current AST says, they will get a big fine. There will be howls of indignant outrage in the media from LLs like you about how unfair it is that somebody breaking a well publicized new law gets punished.

The rest of us will make sure their new ASTs are OK and nrla, Openrent and letting agencies will do the same with their standard templates. And everyone will wonder how anybody could have thought it would generate large numbers of fines and nobody will think it will generate lots of future revenue for Councils

Think of this – corporate manslaughter was introduced as a criminal offence in 2007. Businesses will certainly have complained loudly about high potential fines. In 2024/5 (latest year’s data) there were 3 prosecutions and 2 convictions.

Reply to the comment left by DavidM at 11/01/2026 – 21:01
Corporate manslaughter requires a finding beyond reasonable doubt and incurs hundreds of thousands of pounds in investigation, legal costs, and court time. By contrast, councils can, as a matter of law, require landlords and their advisers to hand over copies of tenancy agreements for examination and, in any event, purportedly encourage no-win no-fee companies to trawl for tenants willing to take action against landlords for alleged defects. That model can easily be extended to any other alleged breach of the regulations. Councils need only satisfy the civil test of a balance of probabilities to justify issuing a fine, which will be dished out like parking tickets, leaving landlords to navigate a lengthy, costly, and uncertain appeals process.

Even with parking tickets there does need to be evidence of wrong doing

If you make sure your AST doesn’t have a clause in it which is contrary to the RRA (such as automatic increasing rent by CPI) and you don’t do anything contrary to the RRA (like trying to increase rents by CPI saying its what’s in your AST).you aren’t going to be found guilty whether on balance of probability or not.

It’s not going to happen in large numbers year after year after year. Once fixed in your contracts you aren’t going to unfix later. It’s nothing like parking tickets where the punishment is small enough that one well publicized case won’t deter everyone else. If the cost of a parking ticket was 5000 quid people would be much more careful to avoid them and there would be far fewer

We’ll see in due course who is right but I’ve not seen evidence or suggestions that large numbers of LLs had fines due to the.Tenancy Fees Act 2019.which made some charges illegal. These are the same sorts of measures.

I think just as the vast majority of tenants are not rogues who will sign a tenancy agreement then refuse to pay up and demand keys on day 1 of the tenancy anyway, the vast majority of LLs are not ‘rogue’, will have read about RRA in the media or via their letting agents, OpenRent, the nrla and others and know there are legal changes with potentially high fines and will do their best to avoid these.

All this discussion is total waffle. Just get an AST from Openrent, NRLA or even the government website (for free). What’s the issue, you will then be fully compliant.

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 12/01/2026 – 06:50
I’d go for an APT myself but I get your point as agreements from those sources ought to be legally compliant.

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 12/01/2026 – 06:50
The onslaught by government on landlords has succeeded because, like a housing officer, you are now promoting the new legally compliant AST agreement. I accept that you have little or no option. However, that agreement is itself designed to transfer value over time from landlords to tenants. Landlords are now responsible for matters that were previously the responsibility of the tenant.

The removal of no-fault evictions and the ability for a judge to determine the level at which rent arrears may be repaid already represent a significant transfer of value. In one historic case, to the surprise of the judge who enforced it, a leading authority allowed the repayment of rent arrears never to exceed an amount that left the tenant with sufficient income to live on. The practical effect was that the arrears were spread over many years. These authorities will be relied upon and expanded in the coming years.

Gone is the time when a landlord could offer its goods and services on whatever terms it deemed commercially viable and allow the market to decide. The new regime turns that principle on its head. It goes as far as it currently can towards giving a prospective tenant an effective right to rent and, once a tenancy is granted, the landlord is compelled to maintain the tenant’s living conditions regardless of whether rent is paid, or when. All of these measures gradually grind away at capital values.

The same pattern followed the Rent Act 1977, and the current government is deploying the same playbook on steroids. It is doing so because the economy has failed and is now locked in a doom loop. The government recognises that one or more generations will never be able to afford to buy, so it has transferred the obligation to house those people to individuals who own more property than they require for their own housing needs. From the government’s perspective, this is a very convenient policy response to a failed economy, as it avoids having to raise taxes to the levels that would otherwise be required to rebuild and maintain council housing estates.