Letting Agents · Compliance Guide
Every legal obligation a UK letting agency must meet — gas safety, EICR, EPC, deposit protection, Right to Rent, smoke alarms, and what changed under the Renters' Rights Act 2025. Updated for 1 May 2026.
Running a letting agency means carrying legal compliance responsibilities on behalf of your landlord clients — and in many cases, carrying personal liability when things go wrong. The list of obligations has grown significantly in the last decade, and the Renters' Rights Act 2025 has added new requirements on top.
This checklist covers every major compliance obligation a fully managed letting agency needs to track, the legislation behind it, the penalty for failure, and the practical rules that trip agents up. It is designed as a working reference — not a marketing document.
At the bottom: how to track all of this without a spreadsheet that collapses under its own weight.
12 obligations. Every one of them can result in a fine, prosecution, or an invalid possession notice.
Gas Safe registered engineer only. Give copy to tenants within 28 days (new tenants: before move-in). Keep record 2 years. 2-month early renewal window — same expiry date applies.
Qualified/competent electrician only. Give to existing tenants within 28 days; new tenants before move-in. C1/C2 remedial works within 28 days. C3 at next inspection.
Minimum E rating. Must be provided to prospective tenants before viewing. Cannot let a sub-E property unless a valid exemption is registered on the PRS Exemptions Register.
At least one on every storey used as living accommodation. Test on first day of tenancy — document it. Typical lifespan: 10 years.
Required in every room with a fixed combustion appliance (gas boiler, gas fire, wood burner, oil boiler). Interconnected CO alarms required in new builds. Typical lifespan: 7–10 years.
Use TDS, DPS, or MyDeposits. Prescribed information to tenant within 30 days. Failure prevents valid Section 8 notice on arrears grounds. No cap on deposits of more than 5 weeks' rent.
Check passport or share code before move-in. For time-limited permission, diarise the expiry and re-check. Landlords (not agents, unless contractually agreed) are liable — clarify responsibility in your management agreement.
Always use the current version from gov.uk. If the government updates it mid-tenancy and you renew/change the tenancy, give the new version. Post-S21 abolition, failure still creates a technical breach.
New from 1 May 2026. Official government PDF. Must be given to all existing tenants by 31 May 2026 and to all new tenants at tenancy start. Free to download from gov.uk.
Mandatory for properties with 5+ tenants from 2+ households sharing facilities. Many councils also require Additional Licensing for smaller HMOs — check with the local authority.
Required in designated selective licensing areas regardless of HMO status. Coverage varies widely by council. Check every council area you manage in.
If a property cannot reach E economically, register on the PRS Exemptions Register before letting. Exemptions expire — diarise renewal.
This question sits at the heart of every management agreement — and the answer is: it depends what you signed.
For most obligations (gas safety, EICR, deposit protection, Right to Rent), the statutory duty falls on the landlord. But where a management agreement explicitly transfers that duty to the agent, the agent takes on personal liability. Prosecutions of agents rather than landlords are becoming more common, particularly for gas safety.
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026. The headline change is the abolition of Section 21 — but the compliance implications for agents go wider.
No-fault evictions ended on 1 May 2026 for all tenancies — new and existing. All possession must now proceed via Section 8 with a valid statutory ground. An agent who sends a Section 21 notice after this date is serving an invalid notice.
Ground 8 (mandatory rent arrears) now requires 3 months' arrears — up from 2 months. The new threshold applies at the date of the notice and at the court hearing. If a tenant pays down below 3 months before the hearing, the mandatory ground fails.
All Section 8 notices served from 1 May 2026 must use Form 3A. Old forms are invalid. Each ground has its own notice period specified in the Act — agents must use the correct period for the grounds being relied upon.
New tenancies from 1 May 2026 cannot have fixed terms. Existing fixed-term tenancies run to expiry and then become periodic. Agents should not offer "fixed term" tenancy agreements to new tenants after this date.
Every tenant must receive the official government information sheet. For existing tenants: by 31 May 2026. For new tenants: at tenancy commencement. Failure to serve carries a civil penalty up to £7,000. The document is a free PDF from gov.uk.
One property, one landlord: a shared spreadsheet works. Twenty properties across eight landlords: you are one missed gas cert renewal away from a prosecution.
The practical problems with spreadsheets at scale:
What a proper system does:
LetSense tracks all 12 compliance types across your entire portfolio.
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See how it works for agencies →Gas safety certificate expiry is the single most common failure — it renews annually and easy to miss across a large portfolio. The second most common is deposit prescription information not being served within 30 days, which can invalidate a Section 8 notice years later. EICRs are increasingly common as the 5-year renewal window catches up with agents who were first compliant in 2020–21.
It depends on your management agreement. Fully managed agencies typically take on compliance obligations on behalf of the landlord. Let-only agents usually do not. Your agreement must be explicit about who arranges and tracks each certificate type. Where liability is transferred to the agent, the agent can be prosecuted or fined directly — not just the landlord.
You must book a new check immediately. There is no grace period. An expired gas safety certificate is a criminal offence — not a civil one. The engineer who carried out the most recent check should be contacted first; if unavailable, any Gas Safe registered engineer covering domestic gas can do the check. Do not wait until the renewal date — if it has already expired, it needed doing yesterday.
Yes. A Section 8 notice is not strictly invalidated by compliance failures the way Section 21 was — but a history of non-compliance can affect how a court views the landlord's conduct, particularly on discretionary grounds. More critically, failure to protect a deposit within 30 days means Ground 2 (deposit not protected) cannot be relied upon, and courts can penalise 1–3× the deposit amount. From May 2026, all possession is via Section 8, so compliance health matters more than ever.
Several things. Section 21 (no-fault eviction) is abolished from 1 May 2026 — all possession notices must now use Section 8 with a valid ground. The Ground 8 arrears threshold increased from 2 months to 3 months. All tenancies become periodic from commencement — fixed terms continue to expiry but cannot be renewed as fixed terms. A new information sheet must be given to all tenants. Agents need to be familiar with the updated Section 8 grounds and Form 3A procedure.
A spreadsheet falls apart beyond 15–20 properties. At scale, you need a system that shows every certificate type for every property, flags expirations at 90/60/30 days, and records when documents were served to tenants. Manual tracking is also a liability risk — if a landlord disputes that you told them about an expiry, you need a dated record. Software purpose-built for letting agents (like LetSense) tracks all certificate types, sends automated reminders, and maintains an audit trail.
The legal obligation sits with the landlord. However, if a management agreement explicitly transfers Right to Rent checking responsibility to the agent, the agent becomes liable. Most fully managed agreements include this. Let-only agents typically do not carry out checks — the landlord remains liable. Either way, the agreement must be explicit. Where agents do carry out checks, they must document the process and date of each check in case of Home Office audit.