Landlords may be FINED £7,000 per property if they fail to send a vital Renters’ Rights Act sheet by 31 May
Landlords must send a PDF document to their tenants by the end of this month or they risk being fined £7,000 per property they own.
After the Tenants’ Rights Act came into force last week, landlords are official information page This explains how the new rules will affect them.
given by law Tenants are provided with a range of new protections. Fixed-term leases will be abolished and replaced by periodic leases, meaning tenants will no longer be locked into long contracts.
Landlords must provide an acceptable reason for ending the tenancy; Chapter 21 ‘no-fault’ releases are prohibited.
The law also gives tenants the right to end a tenancy with two months’ notice, giving them a better ability to combat poor conditions and unreasonable rent increases without fear of retaliatory eviction.
Obligation: Landlords and their managing agents are required to send their tenants a formal information sheet explaining how the new Tenants’ Rights Act will benefit them.
Who sends the document – the landlord or the real estate agent?
The Fact Sheet explains how each tenancy may be affected by changes brought about by the new legislation.
Rather than the Government being responsible for providing this information to tenants, landlords and their letting agents are responsible for sending the document to tenants.
Under government guidance, those who fail to do so could be fined up to £7,000 per tenant by local councils.
Whether the landlord or the rental agency is responsible depends on the type of agreement they have.
In a fully managed service, the agent would normally be expected to issue documentation and manage ongoing compliance on behalf of the homeowner. However, the landlord should double-check that this has been done as they will end up being fined £7,000.
In cases where the rental agency is used solely to find tenants or collect rent, the agency may not have an obligation to submit the form.
In this case, the landlord may need to provide the information form himself.
Government guidance also states that if a landlord has a letting agent managing the property on their behalf, they must give the agent’s information form to the tenant, even if the landlord has also provided it.
The information sheet must be provided to all tenants created before May 1. A copy must be given to each tenant named in the lease.
They must provide the full PDF document from the government website as a hard copy, by mail or hand-delivery to tenants, or by sending it as an attachment via email or text message.
Those renting rooms to tenants in their own homes will not need to submit the PDF document.
Megan Eighteen, chief executive of letting agency membership body Arla Propertymark, says: ‘The key immediate compliance requirement for existing written tenancies is the new Government Tenant Rights Act Fact Sheet.’
‘If your tenants already have a written tenancy agreement before 1 May 2026, the landlord or agent must submit this information form by 31 May 2026.
‘Failure to do so may result in enforcement action or financial penalties by the local authority.’
Lack of awareness among landlords AND tenants
Many landlords may not yet be aware of their responsibilities, according to Freedom of Information figures in the Property Industry Eye sector title.
The information sheet that landlords must provide to tenants was downloaded just 153,000 times in the four weeks after it was published on March 20, according to figures released by the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government to software company Landlord Studio.
This is a far cry from the estimated 2.3 million private landlords in England who must submit the document by May 31.
A separate study suggests that the majority of renters are also unaware of what’s going on.
According to recent research by the TDS Charitable Foundation, more than two-thirds of tenants have either never heard of the Act or are unclear about what it means for them.
This lack of awareness extends to fundamental rights strengthened by Law.
For example, 78 percent of tenants are unaware that they can challenge rent increases in court, undermining one of the central protections the legislation is designed to strengthen.
