Renters Rights Act 2025: What Tenants Can Claim

Before the Act, a landlord could end your tenancy with two months' notice and no reason. Section 21, the so-called 'no-fault eviction', was used roughly 20,000 times a year in England. It's gone. As of May 1, 2026, all new tenancies are periodic with no fixed end date, and landlords must cite a specific legal ground to end them.

The transition also abolished fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies for new lets. If you signed a 12-month AST after May 2026, that contract is now legally a rolling periodic tenancy. Landlords cannot trap tenants in a fixed term without the corresponding protections.

Rent increases are now restricted to once per year, using a formal Section 13 notice. Rent bidding, where competing tenants were encouraged to offer above the asking rent, is now illegal. Advertised rent is the maximum a landlord can charge.

The anti-discrimination provisions are new and enforceable. Landlords cannot refuse to let to tenants with children or to those receiving housing benefit. If a landlord rejects your application for either reason, that refusal is unlawful and can be challenged.

Pet requests are no longer a soft ask. Tenants can formally request permission to keep a pet, and landlords must respond in writing within 28 days. Refusing without reasonable grounds is a breach. The landlord can require pet insurance, but they cannot simply say no without justification.

These are not aspirational policies. They are enforceable legal rights with civil penalties of up to £40,000 for serious breaches (RenterCheck, 2026).

The Act opens several distinct compensation routes. They operate differently and attach to different types of landlord failure. Know which one fits your situation before you file anything.

Rent Repayment Orders (RROs)

An RRO lets you reclaim up to 12 months' rent from a landlord who has committed one of a list of specified offences. The list includes renting out an unlicensed HMO, using illegal eviction tactics, breaching an improvement notice, and failing to comply with a Banning Order. The First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) decides RRO claims, and you do not need a solicitor to apply.

The average UK monthly rent hit £1,367 in the 12 months to January 2026 (BBC, 2026). At 12 months, that's a potential RRO claim of £16,404 for a single tenant in an average property. In London, where rents run higher, the figure is larger.

Civil Penalties for Landlord Breaches

Local councils can issue civil fines to landlords who breach the Act's new provisions. These reach up to £40,000 for the most serious violations (RenterCheck, 2026). Councils are also required to feed enforcement data into the new Private Rented Sector Database, which means repeat offenders are visible.

Tenants don't receive civil penalty money directly. But filing a complaint with your council creates a formal record, triggers an inspection, and sets up the evidential trail you'll need if you escalate to a tribunal.

Deposit Recovery

Deposit protection rules predate the 2025 Act, but the new legislation strengthens enforcement. If your deposit was not protected in an authorised scheme within 30 days of receiving it, or if the prescribed information was not given to you, you're entitled to between one and three times the deposit value as compensation. This applies even if the tenancy has ended.

Disrepair Claims

If your landlord has failed to carry out repairs after written notice, you can claim damages for any harm caused by the disrepair, including damage to your belongings, health impacts, and any rent you paid for a period when the property was not fit for purpose. In a New Zealand case that mirrors the type of claim now possible under UK standards, tenants Lisa-Maree and Dominic Hurdle won over $6,000 in compensation after living in a property that failed to meet Healthy Homes Standards, with an independent inspector confirming the deficiencies (Star News, 2026). UK tribunals apply similar logic: independent evidence of the defect is decisive.

There's a gap between what the Act permits and what tenants actually claim. Most tenants walk away from valid compensation routes because the figures feel abstract or the process seems opaque. They shouldn't.

Award sizes depend on the type of claim and the quality of evidence. For RROs, tribunals apply a percentage of the rent paid during the offending period, weighted by the seriousness of the breach. A landlord running an unlicensed HMO while also failing to protect a deposit is looking at a higher percentage than one guilty of a single administrative failure.

Disrepair claims can include consequential losses. In a US case from Utica, a tenant was awarded over $55,000 in damages, including $10,000 in punitive damages, after her landlord retaliated against her for complaining about infestations and lack of heat. The retaliation included malicious contact with her employer that caused her to lose her job (Rome Sentinel, 2026). UK tribunals cannot award US-style punitive damages, but they can award compensation for consequential losses, health impacts, and distress where evidence supports it.

The lesson from the case data is consistent: tenants who document early, write formally, and submit evidence to the tribunal win more. Tenants who escalate verbally and keep no paper trail win less or nothing.

For a straightforward deposit protection failure, expect one to three times the deposit. For an unlicensed HMO running for six months, expect six months' rent at minimum. For a persistent disrepair case with medical evidence, the range is wide, but it is rarely zero once the evidence is in order.

The abolition of Section 21 from May 2026 is the provision most tenants know about. What they often miss is that attempting to use a Section 21-style eviction after the ban is itself a breach that triggers compensation claims.

If a landlord issues an invalid notice to quit after May 2026, that notice has no legal force. You do not have to leave. If a landlord then attempts physical eviction, or cuts utilities, or changes the locks, those acts are illegal eviction and harassment under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, compounded by the 2025 Act's new penalties.

The tribunal can award damages for unlawful eviction based on the difference between the market rent and the rent you were actually paying, for the period you were displaced. If the property was in a high-demand area and you were on a below-market tenancy, that figure can be substantial.

Landlords still have valid grounds to end a tenancy. They can recover the property for genuine sale, for personal occupation, for repeated rent arrears exceeding two months, and for other grounds listed in Schedule 1 of the Act. The difference from before is that they must prove the ground applies and give the correct notice period. Ground 1A (sale) requires at least four months' notice. Ground 6A (redevelopment) requires at least four months' notice. Landlords who misuse these grounds and then sell or redevelop face a further compensation route for the tenant.

Keep every piece of communication your landlord sends about the property. If they claim they want to sell and then relist it six months later, you have a claim.

Landlords can only raise your rent once in any 12-month period under the 2025 Act, and they must use a valid Section 13 notice to do it. The notice must give at least two months' warning. Anything less is legally ineffective.

If your landlord has tried to raise your rent more than once in a year, or without proper notice, or by more than the market rate, you can challenge it at the First-tier Tribunal within two months of receiving the notice. The tribunal can substitute a lower rent, capped at the market rate for comparable properties in your area.

Unlawful charges are a separate category. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 already banned most fees, but the 2025 Act extends enforcement. Charging above one month's rent in advance is now illegal. If your landlord asked for two or three months upfront, you have a claim for the excess.

Rent bidding was common in competitive London markets. Agents would run informal auctions, with tenants offering above the listed rent to secure a property. This is now prohibited. If you were pressured to pay above the advertised rent through any such process, that excess is recoverable.

Document every payment you made from the start of the tenancy. Bank statements showing the transfer amounts, emails or texts referencing the amounts requested, and any receipts all constitute usable evidence. A tribunal needs to see the paper trail, not just your testimony.

The tenants who win compensation are not always the ones with the worst landlords. They're the ones with the best evidence.

Start with a written record. Every complaint about repairs, every request to see a gas safety certificate, every objection to an unlawful rent increase: put it in writing. Email is sufficient. Text messages work if screenshots are clear. The timestamp matters.

For an RRO claim, the key question is whether the landlord committed a qualifying offence. The most common is renting without an HMO licence. Check your local council's website to see if your property requires a licence and whether the current landlord holds one. A five-bedroom house in multiple occupation that lacks a licence is an open-and-shut qualifying offence. You can file the RRO claim to the First-tier Tribunal directly, without a lawyer.

For a disrepair claim, commission an independent inspection if the issue is serious. The Hurdle case in New Zealand (Star News, 2026) succeeded because an independent inspector confirmed what the tenants reported. Your landlord's assurances that repairs were done carry no weight without physical evidence that they were actually done.

For an unlawful eviction or harassment claim, contact your local council's tenancy relations officer immediately. This creates a contemporaneous record. Photograph any changed locks, collect witness statements from neighbours, and keep copies of any threatening messages.

Platforms like Remedy Legal give tenants an AI-powered assessment of their situation before they commit to a formal claim. Remedy checks landlord compliance across HMO licensing, deposit protection, gas safety certificates, and property standards, and identifies whether you have RRO eligibility. For a tenant who isn't sure which route applies, that clarity is worth getting before anything is filed.

Remedy also drafts formal letters to landlords citing the relevant legislation. This matters because a letter that correctly cites Section 13 of the Housing Act 1988, or Section 35 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025, carries different weight than an informal complaint. Many landlords resolve issues as soon as they receive a properly cited legal letter.

One of the less-discussed provisions of the 2025 Act is the mandatory Private Rented Sector Database. All landlords letting property in England must register on it before advertising or letting a property. Failure to register is itself a civil offence.

The database is public-facing in a limited way and enforcement-facing in full. Local councils can query it to check for compliance. Tenants can check whether their landlord is registered. An unregistered landlord immediately disqualifies themselves from using several of the possession grounds and faces civil penalties.

This database also creates a feedback loop for serial offenders. A landlord who receives a civil fine for one property, then a second for another, builds a visible enforcement history. The Act allows local councils to apply for Banning Orders against repeat offenders. A landlord subject to a Banning Order who continues to let is committing a criminal offence.

For tenants, the database is a pre-tenancy tool. Before signing, check whether your prospective landlord is registered. If they aren't, either walk away or use that fact to negotiate. A landlord who is not registered cannot lawfully evict you using a Section 8 Notice until they comply.

The database rolls out in phases through 2026 and 2027 (Mishcon de Reya, 2026). The registration obligation for new lets began from May 2026. If your landlord signed a new tenancy agreement with you after May 2026 and is not registered, they are already in breach.

The Act creates rights. It does not create free legal representation. A tenant facing an unlicensed landlord, an unlawful eviction, or a Section 13 abuse has real claims available, but getting through the tribunal system without guidance is genuinely hard.

Interactive checkers for rent increase limits, pet request timelines, and notice period validity have emerged as the first wave of self-service tools (NoReply, 2026). These help tenants understand whether a specific landlord action is lawful, which is useful, but they stop short of claim preparation.

Landlord-facing compliance platforms like LandlordOS help landlords track their obligations, which has an indirect benefit for tenants: compliant landlords generate fewer disputes.

Remedy Legal operates on the tenant side of this equation. The platform provides an instant situation assessment with no credit card required, runs a landlord compliance check across HMO licensing, deposit protection, and gas safety, and identifies RRO eligibility. For tenants who want to go further, the £40 one-time access tier includes court bundle generation, tribunal filing support, document storage, deadline tracking, and expert letter templates. The top tier, starting at 10% of winnings on a no-win no-fee basis, adds unlimited human expert support, strategic guidance, expert document review, and a 30-minute initial consultation.

Remedy is not a law firm, and it does not provide legal representation at tribunal in the traditional sense. What it provides is the infrastructure to prepare a case properly: the bundle, the letters, the timeline, the evidence checklist. For the vast majority of RRO and deposit claims, that infrastructure is what determines whether the claim succeeds.

The pricing is structured for the people the Act is designed to protect. Free assessment first. £40 for full case preparation. Percentage of winnings only if you win at the top tier. That's a different model from hiring a solicitor at £200 an hour.