The Renters’ Rights Act starts today – Five things to do before 31 May

The Renters’ Rights Act starts today. The headlines have been bracing, and the comments threads on this site have made the mood clear: landlords feel cornered, fatigued, and unsure whether the business case for letting still works. Some of that frustration is earned. But for most self-managing landlords, the real operational work of 1 May fits onto a single page. Here is what to do, in the order it matters, before the 31 May deadline arrives.

I’ve spent months reading the Act, the statutory instruments, and the implementation roadmap line by line, and talking to landlords every week. The conclusion I’ve come to runs against the prevailing tone. The Act doesn’t punish landlords. It punishes disorganisation. The landlords who treat the next 30 days as an operational reset will be the ones barely affected by all this.

What actually changes today

Section 21 is abolished. Landlords will need to rely on the revised Section 8 grounds. Notices already served before 1 May remain valid, but landlords must apply to the court for a possession order by the earlier of six months from the date of service or 31 July 2026, or the notice will lapse.

Almost all existing ASTs convert automatically to periodic assured tenancies. No new fixed-term ASTs can be granted. Tenants can give two months’ notice to leave at any time. Rent increases are restricted to once per year by Section 13 notice, served on the new prescribed Form 4A. Landlords cannot demand or require more than one month’s rent in advance once the tenancy is signed, although tenants who choose to pay early may still do so voluntarily. Bidding wars are banned, and adverts must state a specific proposed rent.

A written statement of terms must be provided to tenants before any new tenancy is entered into. Landlords with existing written or partly written tenancies must serve the Government’s Information Sheet on every named tenant by 31 May 2026. Landlords with wholly oral tenancies must instead serve a Written Statement of Terms by the same date. Failure on either route carries a civil penalty of up to £7,000 for a first breach, rising to £40,000 for continuing or repeated breaches under the statutory guidance published by MHCLG.

The Private Landlord Ombudsman, the PRS Database, the Decent Homes Standard, and the extension of Awaab’s Law are all on the roadmap but are not in force on 1 May. The Database is expected to roll out regionally from late 2026, with mandatory registration likely in 2027.

What doesn’t change

This is the part the panic coverage tends to skip. Your existing compliance obligations are untouched. Annual gas safety. Five-yearly EICR. EPC. Smoke and CO alarms. Right to rent checks. Deposit protection. HMO and selective licensing. The Renters’ Rights Act adds to that body of law. It does not replace it.

For most self-managing landlords, this is the realisation that takes the temperature down. The Act changes how tenancies are structured and ended. It is not a re-invention of the obligations you already meet.

Why the organised landlord is barely affected

The new enforcement regime gives local authorities broader investigation powers and significantly higher penalties. The starting point for the Information Sheet breach and several others is £4,000, per the MHCLG statutory guidance. The maximum is £7,000 for a first breach and £40,000 for repeated or continuing breaches. Tenants can also claim rent repayment orders covering up to two years’ rent for an expanded list of offences.

For a landlord whose records are scattered across email threads and the back of a notebook, that is a real risk. A missed deadline on the Information Sheet alone could cost £4,000. A misfiled gas certificate that resurfaces in a possession defence could collapse a Section 8 claim.

For a landlord who runs a tight operational ship, the same regime is far less threatening. If you can prove, on demand, that you served the right document on the right date in the right format, the enforcement framework loses most of its bite.

None of this fixes the court bottleneck, which is real and outside any landlord’s control. What organisation does is ensure that when a hearing finally arrives, the documentation is unimpeachable. That is the difference between a six-month delay and a six-month delay that ends in a wasted claim.

The Act doesn’t penalise landlording. It penalises improvisation.

The five things to do before 31 May

One. Work out which of your tenancies will convert today. Almost all existing ASTs will. The exceptions are tenancies where you’ve already served a valid Section 21 or Section 8 notice and proceedings are ongoing.

Two. Diary 31 May 2026 as a hard deadline. If your tenancy is wholly or partly in writing, you must serve the Government Information Sheet on every named tenant. The Information Sheet is only valid when downloaded directly from the GOV.UK page, served as the exact PDF, and given to each named tenant individually. A link by text or email does not count. If your tenancy is wholly oral, you must instead serve a Written Statement of Terms by the same date.

Three. Audit your certificate position. Pull every gas safety certificate, EICR, EPC, and deposit protection record, and check the expiry dates against the next twelve months. Anything expiring inside that window goes on a calendar.

Four. Move your records out of email. If your only copy of a CP12 is an attachment in a thread from 2023, you don’t really have it. Get every compliance document into one place, with renewal dates attached.

Five. Update your tenancy agreement template for new lettings from today, and make sure your written statement of terms includes every item required by the regulations.

What we’ve built at LLCR

If you’ve worked through the checklist above and concluded that you need a system rather than a stack of reminders, that’s what we built LLCR for. It’s a single dashboard for self-managing landlords in England that brings every certificate, deadline, and document into one place.

A few features worth flagging given what’s coming on 1 May:

If you want a sanity check on where your certificates stand right now, the LLCR compliance checker does exactly this in two minutes. Free, no signup.

A Form 3A and Form 4A builder for the new prescribed notices under the RRA. The output is a ready-to-serve PDF in the prescribed form, Section 8 notice or Section 13 rent increase, that just needs the landlord’s signature. Most landlords get a notice built in under two minutes.

A find-a-contractor tool that uses the Google Maps API to surface local tradespeople near your property, with their Google ratings and reviews attached. When something breaks at a property, you’re not starting from scratch on a Saturday night.

And as your single source of truth, a dashboard that holds every gas, electrical, EPC, and deposit record, with automated reminders before each renewal date so nothing slips.

When the PRS Database goes live, our intention is for LLCR to work alongside your registration so your records aren’t fragmented across two systems. We’ll share more detail closer to the time.

A partnership with Property118

I’m pleased to share that Property118 and LLCR have agreed a partnership for this community.

Discount: 10% lifetime reduction on all Starter and Pro plans, monthly or annual. Stacks with founder pricing for the first 100 subscribers, and continues to apply on standard pricing once founder slots are filled.

Code at checkout: PROPERTY118

Learn More

The times are changing, but compliance doesn’t have to be the thing that catches you out. We hear how this community is feeling about the Act, and we built LLCR to take the operational weight off your shoulders. The Renters’ Rights Act is the start of a longer cycle, not the end of one. We’ll be here for every change that follows.

I’d be glad to hear from landlords who’ve already started updating their processes. What did you change first? And what’s still keeping you up at night?

And one final note for tool builders. LLCR is open to partnerships and our aim is to make this community feel supported, not isolated. Self-managing landlords deserve a properly connected ecosystem, and the more of us building toward that, the better.

About the author

I am a property law paralegal, qualifying as a solicitor. I 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.