Starting a New Tenancy After the Renters' Rights Act: Your Checklist

Every new residential tenancy in England starting from 1 May 2026 is governed by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. If you are letting a property for the first time since that date — or if an existing tenancy became periodic or was renewed — you are now operating under a fundamentally changed legal framework.

Here is what has changed, what you need to do before handing over the keys, and how the compliance checklist has evolved.

The biggest changes for new tenancies

1. No more fixed-term tenancies

Section 1 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 inserted a new provision into the Housing Act 1988 with the following operative effect:

"Terms of an assured tenancy are of no effect so far as they provide for a tenancy to be a fixed term tenancy, or for periods of the tenancy to be different from the periods for which rent is payable."

In plain terms: fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies no longer exist. All new tenancies are periodic tenancies with periods matching the rent payment cycle (typically monthly). You can still agree an initial period where the tenant commits to staying (equivalent to the old fixed term), but the tenancy itself is legally periodic from day one.

What this means in practice:

You can still ask for an initial commitment period as a contractual term, but it does not create a fixed-term tenancy
There is no "holding over" at end of a fixed term — the tenancy is already periodic
Rolling month-to-month from day one means the tenant can leave on one month's notice at any time after the first 6 months

2. No Section 21 notices

Section 21 has been abolished. There is no "no-fault" route to possession. If you need to end a tenancy, you must use Section 8 grounds and demonstrate that one of the statutory grounds applies.

This changes the risk calculus for landlords significantly: every pre-tenancy compliance step matters more, because compliance failures previously resolved by re-serving a Section 21 notice cannot be resolved that way anymore.

3. No rent in advance beyond 28 days

Section 8 of the Renters' Rights Act inserted a new section 4B into the Housing Act 1988, voiding any term requiring rent in advance once a tenancy has been entered into. The permitted window is the initial pre-tenancy period and the first 28 days — beyond that, you cannot require tenants to pay rent in advance.

This does not affect the holding deposit or security deposit (which remain subject to existing deposit protection rules).

4. Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet

From 1 May 2026, landlords must provide tenants with a government-produced information sheet setting out their rights under the Renters' Rights Act. The How to Rent guide was withdrawn when the Act commenced (GOV.UK: "This publication was withdrawn on 1 May 2026"); the RRA Information Sheet 2026 is the new document landlords must serve.

The Information Sheet was published in final form on 20 March 2026 and is available at gov.uk/government/publications/the-renters-rights-act-information-sheet-2026. Key serving requirements:

Must be provided to all tenants with assured tenancies that have written terms
Can be served as a printed hard copy (posted or given in person) or as the PDF sent electronically — sending a link to the PDF is not valid
Existing tenants had a serving deadline of 31 May 2026
Failure to serve carries a fine of up to £7,000

Download and provide the PDF directly from the official GOV.UK page before each new tenancy starts.

The new pre-tenancy compliance checklist

For every new tenancy starting from 1 May 2026, you must ensure the following are in place before the tenant moves in:

Safety certificates and inspections

Obligation	What you need	Frequency
Gas safety certificate (if gas supply)	Annual CP12 from Gas Safe engineer	Every 12 months
EICR	Electrical Installation Condition Report	Every 5 years
EPC	Energy Performance Certificate, E or above	Every 10 years
Legionella risk assessment	Written assessment	Periodic review (no fixed statutory interval; review when circumstances change)

All certificates must be given to the tenant before they move in (or within 28 days for the EICR if a new tenancy starts mid-report-cycle).

Tenant checks and pre-tenancy actions

Action	Details
Right to rent check	Verify every adult occupant's right to live in the UK before tenancy starts
Deposit protection	Protect in approved scheme within 30 days; serve prescribed information
Smoke and CO alarms	Test on day one; document the test
Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet	Provide the current government information sheet to tenant
Inventory	Signed schedule of condition (not legally required but critical evidence)

Documentation to provide

Under the new regime, the documentation you give tenants at the start of a tenancy forms the foundation of your compliance defence if anything goes wrong later. At minimum, provide:

Current gas safety certificate (if applicable)
Current EICR
Current EPC
Deposit scheme details and prescribed information
Right to rent check evidence (retain a copy yourself)
Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet
Tenancy agreement (written, even though this is not legally mandatory)
Inventory signed by both parties

What the tenancy agreement now looks like

You cannot include a fixed-term clause. Your tenancy agreement should:

State clearly it is an assured periodic tenancy
Specify the rent period (typically calendar monthly)
Not include any clause providing for a fixed term (such clauses are void)
Include any agreed initial commitment period as a contractual term rather than a fixed-term clause

Standard tenancy agreement templates from NRLA, Shelter, and leading solicitors have all been updated for the new regime. Do not use an old AST template — it may contain void clauses.

Can you still do "student lets" with a September end date?

The Act preserves some flexibility for student HMOs. Ground 4A is a new mandatory possession ground that allows landlords who let HMO properties to full-time students to recover possession during the summer months (the possession window runs from 1 June to 30 September). The landlord must give notice at the outset of the tenancy that they intend to rely on Ground 4A, and the tenancy must have been entered into with that notice in place.

If you let student HMO accommodation with defined academic year cycles, take specific advice — the rules are complex and a simple "it ends in July" clause will no longer work as it did under ASTs.

What about existing tenancies?

Tenancies that existed before 1 May 2026 converted to the new periodic assured tenancy regime on that date. If you have existing tenants who started under an old AST, their tenancy is now subject to the Renters' Rights Act rules. You cannot rely on old AST fixed-term end dates to end the tenancy — you need Section 8 grounds.

See our Renters' Rights Act guide for the full picture on how existing tenancies were affected.

Why compliance matters more than ever

Under the old AST regime, many landlords relied on Section 21 as a backstop: if a tenant relationship went wrong, a Section 21 notice (properly served) would eventually result in possession regardless of compliance status. Many landlords discovered compliance gaps only when serving a Section 21 — and then resolved them to make the notice valid.

Under the new regime:

There is no Section 21 to fall back on
Section 8 discretionary grounds can be lost if courts view the landlord as operating poorly
Compliance failures (missing gas certificate, unregistered deposit) could be used by the tenant as leverage in any possession dispute
Local authority enforcement of the PRS Database (once live) will create additional compliance dependencies for seeking possession

Getting every compliance step right before the tenancy starts protects you throughout the tenancy, not just at the start.

Use our rental compliance score to check your current position across all 13 obligations.

How DueProper will help

DueProper is built for exactly this compliance discipline — tracking every certificate and obligation for every property, with reminders before deadlines and evidence stored centrally. As the Renters' Rights Act changes the risk profile of letting, having a clear compliance record becomes essential rather than optional.

Coming soon — join the waitlist for early access.

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