Right to Rent changes for England’s landlords from October

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“It also warns landlords against favouring applicants simply because their status is easier to verify.”
Why would I put myself out to try and verify a difficult applicant?
Not happening.
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“Anyone alleging unlawful discrimination by a landlord or prospective landlord can bring a complaint before a county court.”

So a disgruntled applicant can take the landlord to court when they are not even in the running to be a tenant?
What drugs are these uncivil servants on ?

Landlords in England face civil fines of up to £10,000 per occupier for failing to check a tenant’s immigration status, and up to five years in prison for knowingly housing someone without the Right to Rent. And the government want landlords to risk this, because they can not get their act together and document appropriately immigration into this country and landlords have to go searching for further evidence.

I already act as boarder control.
I make sure R2R id is checked using Gvt own online service.
Now I am supposed NOT to discriminate if the applicant says its not possible to check their status through this purposely enacted online checking service ( which itself was introduced to stop reliance on other ‘evidence’ like paper documentation to stop fraud…)

*Application filed in bin*

Using the Right to Rent Share Code for international applicants is easy. Verifying a UK applicant is more difficult, especially if they don’t do a physical, in person viewing. I tried the verification services a couple of years ago but they were either incredibly glitchy, expected huge volumes of tenant checks or stopped trading.
Does anyone know which current services work for independent landlords who need to check maybe 20 applicants a year?

Reply to the comment left by Imout Ofhere at 29/09/2026 – 07:58Well said. All the onus and responsibility is on landlords. The big corporate landlords can afford to have legal teams to fight their cases. They can afford to pay off part of their sickeningly large profits to pay fines. Do you all now see, why this is happening? Why are small landlords being driven out of the market?

More government nonsense, wasting landlord’s time and money, while they let illegals stream in. Yet another tax grab with fines which will catch a lot of ordinary landlords out. We are not border control officers on £40k a year salary.
Whatever next will they bring in to kill off smaller landlords.

It seems that we are absolutely not allowed to discriminate anyone due to race, colour, religion, political persuasion (although that might change), sex, age (probably), income? Etc.., etc…
I presume you can discriminate on the applicant’s job or profession, otherwise I think the government are in serious breach of their own regulations by their extreme discrimination against landlords. However, I expect they have some sort of exemption.

Let’s remember that Insurance companies routinely discriminate and the government allows that! They ask higher premiums if a tenant is on benefits or self-employed etc.

And who would the ‘registered providers’ of verification be? Yet another ‘service’ provider that can charge a landlord? Goodness me – another fee because of course we aren’t paying enough already,

So what happens when the ‘acceptable paper documents’ are found to have been fabricated by AI?

Reply to the comment left by Jo Westlake at 29/09/2026 – 10:02
Hi Jo,

The list you’re after exists in one place, and from tomorrow it’s the only one that counts.

If you verify digitally you’ve got to use a provider on the government’s digital verification services register, run by OFDIA, whose entry carries the right to rent supplementary code note. That’s what catches people out. Plenty sit on it for right to work or DBS but not right to rent, and a check by one of those doesn’t buy you a statutory excuse. Filter to right to rent and what’s listed is current by definition, which fixes what you hit with services going glitchy or folding.

Two things before you pay for anything on 20 checks a year.

Digital’s optional. Checking original documents in person is still valid and free, so a provider’s only worth it for someone you can’t get in front of.

For that, a registered provider can verify British and Irish passports, including ones up to six months past expiry. That’s exactly your UK applicant gap.

If someone can’t produce documents because they’ve got something outstanding with the Home Office, that’s what the Landlord Checking Service is for. You get a positive or negative notice back, usually within two working days, and a positive one is your statutory excuse. It costs nothing, and beats binning the application.

OJ