On 1 May, English housing law will change significantly with the implementation of the first stage of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025.
I have had the task, over the past few months, of bringing my Landlord Law membership site information into line with the new rules.
The most challenging, and for members, probably the most important task, is a new Renters Rights Act compliant tenancy agreement.
The Landlord Law tenancy agreement
The Landlord Law tenancy agreement is very popular with members. It is a key reason many members stay with us for so long.
The new Renters Rights Act version is keenly anticipated
I didn’t really start working on it until shortly before Easter, after the publication of the final version of the regulations setting out the new requirements.
This is in the snappily named Assured Tenancies (Private Rented Sector) (Written Statement of Terms etc and Information Sheet) (England) Regulations 2026.
It’s important that any (assured periodic) tenancy agreement I create is compliant with this, as members could get fined if I don’t.
Thinking about the new agreement
Although I did not actually start writing anything until Easter, I have been thinking about it for a while.
I do that with all new things I create or write about. They get carried around in my head during a kind of ‘gestation period’. Often, I get good new ideas first thing in the morning.
But before talking about my conclusions, let me first explain how the Landlord Law documents system works.
The Landlord Law Document Generator
Using some software called ‘Gravity Forms’, our documents are created by a magic mail merge process between a form and a php document.
The php file is mostly written in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which, fortunately, I am reasonably good at. (CSS, now that’s a different story…).
The great thing, or things, about this system are that:
- Landlords are able to put their own information into the form and choose between different options – so there is a fairly high degree of customisation (although the main template wording can’t be changed)
- I can give detailed instructions on the form to guide landlords and help them complete it
- We have a certain amount of control over the final appearance of the document.
We have been using this system for our documents ever since the third iteration of Landlord Law was developed in 2018, and it has, by and large, worked well.
Anyway, back to my initial conclusions.
The ‘Key Information’
The ‘required content’ as set out in the regulations should, I decided, be in a separate section, right at the top of the agreement.
Remembering the Welsh agreements, I decided to call it the ‘Key Information’ section. This would include all the required information, either in full or with references to where it appears elsewhere in the document.
This would mean that Local Authority Officials, if checking the tenancy agreement for compliance, would be satisfied after reading the first few pages. This should reduce the risk of enforcement action or penalties.
It would be nice if the Key Information section could have a border around it, to make it stand out, but I would have to ask Gill, my IT and website developer, about that.
The procedures
I have been developing a number of procedures for landlords and tenants to follow in certain circumstances.
I decided to incorporate them into the tenancy agreement. This would give them more authority as they would be part of the tenancy contract.
Hopefully, they will also help landlords and tenants by giving them clear, step-by-step guidance in specific circumstances.
Bills and guarantees
I also needed to sort out how to deal with bills and guarantees.
Bills
In my current (or old agreements, depending on when you are reading this), members can have bills included in the rent. This is very popular, particularly with student landlords.
The sums paid are covered by a ‘bills allowance’ in the rent, which members can increase if the bills paid by them go up.
However, this arrangement will not be possible in the new regime. Post 1 May 2026, bills can only be increased once a year via the section 13 procedure.
I wrote a post on the Landlord Law new blog saying I was going to remove the bills-included option, but was immediately contacted by members saying, ‘please, can they remain?’
So I needed to work out how to do this within the new system.
Guarantees
The current/old agreement also has provision for a form of guarantee to be included. However, this is pretty basic and would not survive a rent increase.
This is not a problem pre Renters Rights Act, as most landlords and agents get tenants to sign a new guarantee at ‘renewal’ when the rent is normally increased. Tenants oblige, knowing that if they don’t, they risk a section 21 eviction.
However, post 1 May, there will be no renewals (as fixed terms are abolished) and no section 21 (also abolished).
I have already drafted up a new guarantee deed, which (hopefully) overcomes this problem. However, it is not suitable for inclusion in the tenancy agreement document as it is quite long and needs to be individually signed as a deed.
So, I decided, the included guarantee will have to go. However, again, there was an outcry.
So these were two problems I would have to resolve.
Working on the original
Drafting up this document was not, surely, going to be as difficult as my task in 2008, when I first created my own ‘plain English style’ documents.
That took me several months.
This time, I have the basis of my current agreement to work from. It has been honed over the years and is now not only very clear and easy to read, but also contains many brilliant clauses suggested by Landlord Law members.
So how hard could it be?
Next time. Drafting the text. Or find links all posts in this overview.
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