This is a question to the blog clinic from Jacqueline, who is a landlord in England.
At the end of the AST fixed term, the tenancy went periodic. I have put the rent up on or around the end of the AST date, but not now for 18 months
Do I have to wait for the same month to increase as I did 18 months ago, or can I do it now and not wait for the date I previously used? I understand I can only do once a year
Answer
If you are looking to increase rent under the statutory notice procedure (under s13 of the Housing Act 1988), you must use the statutory form 4, which can be downloaded from the gov.uk website.
There are three requirements which apply when setting the date when the new rent will start:
1. You must give a minimum notice period which must not be less than one month.
If your tenancy has a ‘period’ which is longer than one month, then the notice period must equal this. Unless it is a yearly tenancy when the notice period is six months.
The vast majority of periodic tenancies will have monthly periods so the notice period will need to be monthly.
2. The starting date for the new rent must not be less than 52 weeks after the date the rent was last increased under the statutory notice procedure.
There is nothing against the starting period for the new rent being longer than 52 weeks though, so a gap of 18 months should be fine.
There is also nothing about the increase having to be on the anniversary of the last increase. However
3. The new rent must start at the beginning of a ‘period’ of the tenancy.
So if your tenancy periods run from the 3rd day of the month to the 2nd day of the month, the new rent should start on the first 3rd day of the month after one month after the notice is served on your tenant.
The statutory notice has a lot of helpful notes on the back so make sure you read these carefully before completing the form.
Note by the way that it is only when you are using the s13 notice procedure that you can only increase rent once every 12 months. See this ‘Urban Myth’ post which explains this.
If the property is in Wales,
The rules are very similar, save that
- The notice period is two months rather than one
- The prescribed form is form RHW12, which can be found on the Welsh government website.
The Renters Reform Bill
This is proposing stricter rules for increasing rent, and if the bill becomes law, then there will be a ban on increasing rent more than once every 12 months.
However, at the moment, the bill has only had its first reading and is looking increasingly unlikely to come into law before the next General Election.