Renters' Rights Act Penalties For Landlords

The new Renters' Rights Act is a minefield for landlords who don't keep up with their paperwork.

The act introduces a swathe of expensive penalties for breaking letting rules.

Councils can charge £7,000 civil penalties for breaking housing rules, such as:

• Letting a home as a fixed-term tenancy instead of a rolling tenancy
• Ending a tenancy verbally instead of serving the relevant forms
• Not giving a tenant a written statement of terms or the information sheet about changes to the law introduced by the Act
• Serving purported possession notices or not giving a tenant the mandatory written warning detailing a specified possession ground
• Using a Section 8 possession ground, believing that a court will not grant a possession order on that ground

£40,000 penalties

The highest penalties are saved for the worst offences. Landlords face a fine of up to £40,000. Among the offences listed for a £40,000 penalty are:

• Re-letting or remarketing a property within a 12-month restricted period after successfully using Ground 1 or 1A to gain possession, which covers evicting a tenant so the landlord or someone in their family can move into or evicting because the property is due to be sold
• Using a ground for possession that a landlord knows the court would not grant, resulting in the tenant leaving within four months without a formal court order.
• Committing another housing offence within five years of a previous penalty or conviction.
• Continuing to commit an offence for more than 28 days after receiving a financial penalty for the same offence.

These new penalties come into force from May 1, 2026, which is the same day Section 21 no-fault evictions and fixed-term tenancy agreements are abolished.

Councils are likely to add other charges and fees to Renters Rights Act penalties, such as prosecution costs and rent repayment orders.

Currently, councils can fine landlords up to £30,000 as a civil penalty or pursue an unlimited fine through the courts.

Common Landlord Offences

Councils can currently issue a fixed penalty notice for a number of housing offences, like:

• Letting an unlicensed house in multiple occupation ( HMO)
• Breaching HMO licence conditions:
• Failure to comply with an Improvement notice, enforcement notice or prohibition order
• Overcrowding an HMO by letting a property to more tenants than the licence allows
• Breaching management regulations, such as maintaining safety measures
• Illegal evictions and harassment
• Failing to register for additional and selective licensing, where appropriate

Landlord prosecutions

Although the government is handing councils the tools to penalise rogue landlords, it seems few are taking up the cudgel.

In response to a recent Freedom of Information request, half of English councils did not issue any financial penalties, while a third preferred informal enforcement action rather than legal action between 2022 and 2024.

The FOI request generated replies from 252 councils that had prosecuted 640 landlords and issued 4,702 penalty notices.

During the same period, tenants made around 300,000 complaints about their landlords and rented accommodation.

Separate data from the government's English Housing Survey reckons 2.5 million private landlords let around 4 million properties.