1. Substantial parts of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (“the 2025 Act”) came into force on 1 May 2026. The 2025 Act substantially amends the Housing Act 1988 (“the 1988 Act”).
2. According to the Government it will: “transform the experience of private renting”; a statement with which many agree, though there also seems to be a broad measure of division about how. The Government’s published guidance states that it is intended to be for the benefit of both landlords and tenants.
3. The aim of this article is to highlight the main, but by no means all, changes that are introduced by the 2025 Act, ideas and questions that appear to be unaddressed and unanswered, and what might happen as a result.
The abolition of ‘Section 21 evictions’
4. This is the idea that has generated the most headlines, and which is proposed by the Government as the most important new development.
5. Section 1 of the 2025 Act converts what were fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies into assured periodic tenancies. At the same time, assured shorthold tenancies are abolished (Section 2). Accordingly, a landlord’s ability to simply serve a notice on the tenant requiring possession of the property to be given back at the end of the contract under Section 21 of the 1988 Act is dispensed with. In other words, to borrow the Government’s language, ‘no fault evictions’ are replaced with a regime under which the landlord can only retake possession if they have ‘a reason’ (more on that below).
6. The politically and philosophically-minded might no doubt have a view on whether it can sensibly be said (as the Government’s published guidance does, using these words) that it is not “reasonable” in and of itself for somebody who owns property to simply want to “take it back” at the end of the contractually agreed term. Indeed, by page 8 of the published guidance, that idea has become “a scourge”, of “rogues and chancers” whose desire must be replaced by a “valid” reason instead. In this author’s view, the language is curiously bold, to the point of apparent contempt for a concept of private property ownership that has traditionally been viewed by many as both basic and uncontroversial. But enough of that. Fortunately, there are interesting legal questions here too.
7. Consider the position of a guarantor who guaranteed the obligations of an assured shorthold tenant before the implementation of the 2025 Act (perhaps even before it was passing through Parliament), who now finds that the fixed term for those obligations has been replaced by an indefinite one.
8. Does the guarantee still bind? It may be that the terms of the AST and/or the Guarantee provided for the scenario, but the 2025 Act does not. Nor does the guidance. The rule in Holme v Brunskill (1877) 3 Q.B.D. 495 is that any material variation in the terms of a principal contract between creditor and principal will discharge a surety. Similarly, is the contract of guarantee frustrated? It is hard to see how the making indefinite of obligations originally undertaken for a limited period of time only, is not to change those obligations to: “a thing radically different from that which was undertaken”.
9. This is a serious point surely for both landlords and tenants. If a guarantor falls away then a landlord has worse recourse to unpaid rent. But a tenant is prejudiced too; they are more likely to find that arrears lead either to eviction, or a debt claim against them, not to mention worse references for the future.
This is not rent control
10. “The Government does not support the introduction of rent controls, and nothing in the Act restricts landlords raising rents in line with market prices” says the guidance.
11. Section 6 of the 2025 Act amends section 13 of the 1988 Act to allow a landlord to serve notice to increase rent to an “open market rent”. This can be agreed, or it can happen anyway in the absence of either agreement or a determination (below).
12. Section 14 of the 1988 Act, as amended, allows a tenant who feels that the requested rent is not “the open market rent” to apply to the FTT for a determination as to whether it is or not (and what the ‘correct’ open market rent would be). Section 14ZA (4) of the 1988 Act now provides that the determination made by the Tribunal can have the result that the rent due under the tenancy can go down as well as up.
13. The existence of this regime is not new, but what is new is the frequency with which it is likely to be invoked, because whereas a landlord used to be able to serve a Section 21 notice and ask for a new rent as a condition of a new letting, that possibility has been removed by the abolition of the Section 21 regime as above.
14. Which begs the question, how would the open-market rent be determined? The legal test is set out in section 14 of the 1988 Act. But are there now more practical problems?
15. The answer is unlikely to be by looking at how much rent the premises have actually attracted recently on the open market, because a) the security of tenure changes (above) mean it probably has not been on the market, and b) the new regime against ‘bidding wars’ contained within the 2025 Act (below) means that there would not have been unfettered competition for it in any event. Instead, the determination is to be made by judges on a Tribunal panel “who will determine what the market rent should be” as the guidance puts it. A critic might suggest that the quoted words are a contradiction in terms.
16. This is, again, likely not just to be a problem for landlords. One might think that, faced with the idea of the rent being increasingly determined by a panel rather than the market, a landlord would inflate its requested rent so as to ‘allow’ for a panel’s inevitable reduction. Could this therefore lead to an increase in the sorts of legal disputes the 2025 Act is supposed to reduce? Moreover, if, as seems rather possible, a landlord (or possibly even a tenant) finds themselves having to make their case by adducing evidence of comparables from a supportive estate agent, is that going to lead to ‘the correct’ result?
17. Landlords should also note section 14(A2) of the 1988 Act. The ability of the tenant to ask the FTT to determine the rent is not limited to circumstances in which the landlord has served a notice trying to increase it. Section 14(A2) seems to allow a tenant to challenge the rent anyway, as long as it is done within the first 6 months of the tenancy. In other words, the first thing a tenant can do after agreeing exclusive possession at a rent, is ask the FTT to change the rent.
18. Section 14(7) of the amended 1988 Act allows the FTT, after determination of a new market rent, to suspend the implementation of the new rent for up to 2 months in cases of undue hardship.
19. A final point of note is the statement in the guidance: “We are clear that landlords should consider a tenant’s individual circumstances when negotiating rental conditions”. This is not explained. What individual circumstances? Is this, in fact, a suggestion that a landlord should simply charge less than a market rent if a tenant is unable to pay a market rent? (Note also the phrase “rental conditions”. Is this something different to just “rent”?)
Bidding wars and other rent provisions
20. Section 56 of the 2025 Act provides that landlords must advertise the rent at which they will let, and may not accept a greater amount. This is designed to prevent bidding wars and ‘gazumping’. It seems logical that it may lead to landlords deliberately inflating the sum they seek, and then gradually reducing it if no tenant is attracted on first advertisement.
21. New Section 4B of the 1988 Act provides that a landlord may not ask for, or accept, payments of rent ‘up front’ in the pre-tenancy period save, in effect, for the first periodic payment. It is said by the Government that this will prevent landlords from ‘playing-off’ tenants against each other by asking for sums of money that only some of them can afford so as to arrive at the best commercial result (remember the quote above about the Act not impeding market rents?). That may be right. It may also be right that some tenants lose out as a result of this new provision because the offer of a payment ‘up-front’ was their only means of realistically overcoming other problems such as a lack of good references, or an inability to demonstrate that they have sufficient income to be obviously able to continue to make periodic payments of rent thereafter. This is perhaps all the more so given that it may well now be the case that potential guarantors are less enthusiastic about their indefinite suretyship.
Pets
22. Section 16A of the 1988 Act now makes it an implied term of assured tenancies to which it applies that a tenant is able to keep a pet subject to the grant of consent by the landlord. That consent is not to be unreasonably refused. A decision on consent has to be made, in principle within 28 days of a request in writing. Section 16B allows a landlord to lawfully refuse consent, inter alia, if a) to grant it would be a breach of a headlease or, b) the headlease requires the consent of the headlessor, and the landlord has taken reasonable steps to obtain it but it has not been given.
23. As before, there are mandatory grounds, and discretionary grounds. The former are in Part 1 of Schedule 2 of the 1988 Act, the latter in Part 2.
24. Ground 1, very broadly, is a ground under which a landlord can seek to end the tenancy if they require the property for their, or a close family member’s, occupation. The use of the word “requires” is interesting. It does not obviously mean simply “wants”. Nor, is it the same (as it could have been) as the “intends” that is required under section 30(1) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, and which appears in Ground 1A. Is it enough to simply want to move in? The guidance speaks of a landlord who “wishes” to move in. But that is not actually what the ground says.
25. Ground 1A, equally broadly, allows possession to a landlord who intends to sell or grant a lease longer than 21 years. This time the word “intends” is used. The guidance still states, again, that the section applies if the landlord “wishes” to sell. Again, that is not what the section actually says. It is unclear whether that means that the test is the same as ground 1 above or not. One might have thought that the use of the different word “intends” was supposed to import a different test/requirement, perhaps akin to that in grounds (f) and (g) of section 30(1) of the 1954 Act.
26. Ground 2 allows possession where the property is subject to a mortgage granted before the beginning of the tenancy and the mortgagee is entitled to exercise a power of sale and requires possession for the purpose of disposing of it with vacant possession. In Quennel v Maltby [1979] 1 WLR 318 Lord Denning suggested that the Court would be able in equity to prevent a lender from obtaining possession unless the power of sale was exercised bona fide. The authors of the 2025 Act have missed the opportunity to expressly legislate in such a way as to not require such equitable intervention. It is not, in principle, difficult for an unscrupulous landlord and a helpful lender to create what could turn out to be quite a useful mortgage.
27. Ground 6 continues to allow possession when the landlord intends to demolish or reconstruct the whole, or a substantial part of the property, or to carry out substantial works on it or any part of it or any of the building of which it forms part and the work cannot be carried out without the tenant giving up possession for one of the reasons that then follows. This is similar to section 30(1)(f) of the 1954 Act.
28. Ground 8 requires possession where a tenant has failed to pay rent so that at the date of service of a notice, and at the date of the hearing (in the case of a tenant whose rent is due monthly), 3 months’ rent is due. This is a change to the 2 months’ rent that had to be due before. There are other requirements in respect of tenants whose rent is due quarterly, yearly, weekly or fortnightly.
29. The discretionary grounds remain largely unaffected. Of particular note, to most landlords, are the discretionary grounds relating to rent (grounds 10 and 11), breach of tenancy generally (ground 12), deterioration of property (ground 13), and anti-social behaviour (ground 14).
Conclusions
30. There are some interesting changes to the law contained within the 2025 Act. The basic scheme is similar to changes that have been tried in other European jurisdictions, most recently parts of Germany and Sweden. General guidance can be found on the Government’s website; “Guide to the Renter’s Rights Act”, which contains a further link to a specific guide for landlords, and a further link to a specific guide for tenants that, at the time of writing, takes the reader to a page which states that the page you were trying to view does not exist.
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