Unexpected Negative Impacts of the Renters’ Rights Act
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which came into force in May 2026, is intended to protect vulnerable renters from unscrupulous or negligent landlords, but issues are arising from the detail.
To protect vulnerable tenants, assured shorthold tenancies were abolished and renters were given a longer period of notice and chance to catch up unpaid rent.
Money for housing is generally paid direct to the tenant who then pays it to the landlord.
However, it is all too easy to use that money for more obviously pressing needs such as food, electricity or a credit card bill. The only solution for the landlord is to take the tenant to court under Ground 8 of the act.
The new law states you can ‘evict your tenant if they owe you at least 3 months’ rent, if they pay rent monthly or at least 13 weeks’ rent, if the rent is paid weekly or fortnightly.’
- Your tenant will need to owe you 3 months’ or 13 weeks’ rent on the day you give them the notice and at the date of the hearing.
- Under the legislation, you must give 4 weeks’ notice before you can apply to the court for a possession order to evict your tenant.’
In essence, the Renters’ Rights Act effectively put back the arrear’s threshold by one month to 3 months and increased the notice period from two weeks to four weeks.
The Consequences
The Ministry of Justice’s figures for April and June this year gave the average time of 27.1 weeks between putting in a claim to achieving repossession.
To this, a landlord must add the notice period of four weeks and the months of rent arrears.
This means that a tenant could potentially not pay rent for a period of typically 34.1 weeks, nearly 8 months, before getting possession. For a landlord this can be awful.
For the landlord
The majority of landlords have tended to be hard-working, normal individuals seeking a safe investment. They possibly have a buy-to-let mortgage. They cannot afford to go for potentially the best part of a year without the rent that pays that mortgage.
The Law now states that ‘Your tenant cannot be evicted under this ground [Ground 8] if they pay off what they owe or owe less than the amounts above [3 months/13 weeks as above] by the time you get to court.’ This means a landlord can find themselves helpless if a tenant plays this system.
There are some systems in place for payment direct to a landlord but the application to the council can only be made after 8 weeks of arrears. By the time that this is processed by the Council this invariably takes 3 months plus before future payments can be made directly to the Landlord. This is cumbersome and slow.
For small-scale landlords, that rent may be critical which is why so many Landlords are selling up or converting their properties to holiday lets.
This is reducing supply, and in some areas, pushing up rents for all tenants – including the majority of tenants who pay their rent on time.
For the tenant
Perversely, the situation can be more devastating for a tenant. For the tenant, who is presumably unable to pay rent for good reason, such as loss of a job, the court visit is potentially devastating.
A Crown Court Injunction (CCJ) appears on the debtor’s credit report for six years unless paid in full within the first month.
According to the Debt Advisory Services, a CCJ is seen by lenders as a sign of financial risk and the consequences of this include:
- Problems gaining approval for loans, credit cards or overdrafts;
- Virtual impossibility of getting a mortgage, or remortgage, at any reasonable rate;
- Refusal of applications for mobile phone contracts or car finance agreements;
- Higher interest rates on any credit that is achieved.
In addition, all CCJs are recorded on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines, which is available to the public.
Quite apart from the mortification of financial difficulties being public knowledge, it could compromise both finding accommodation and any job applications.
Potential landlords or letting agents may see it when checking your background.
Employers in certain industries, especially finance, could notice it during background checks.
For a few tenants who haven’t paid their rent and have gone into arrears (which may be for reasons such as they have lost their job due to ill health, redundancy etc) and who owe too much back rent, this could be devastating and still affect their lives years later.
Conclusion
Whilst there are mechanisms in place to support those who find themselves in financial difficulty, it seems short-sighted to allow those unfortunates to compromise themselves further, potentially for years, AND to reduce the number of places they could find to live and squander many job possibilities.
The consequences of too much protection for the tenant is a lack of supply and an increase in rents for all and if the tenants cannot keep up payments, the individual tenants can be significantly compromised for many years.
Where does this leave the already-desperate market for rental properties?
To help the tenant and to help the landlord it would be much better if Housing Benefit were to be paid direct to the landlord at an earlier stage.