As of the 1st May 2026, Phase 1 of the Renter's Rights Act will be implemented. This will bring about certain changes that will effect the way you manage your existing assured tenancies moving forward, and the way in which you let properties that will have assured tenancies in the future.

A Guide to the Renter's Rights Act 2025 can be found on the Government's website. Along with some more detailed information on each phase here.

We've prepared the below guide to assist you in managing aspects of the new reform within Expert Agent

Tenancy Reform

Rent Increases

Pet Requests

Rental Bidding

PRS Database and PRS Landlord Ombudsman

Tenancy Reform

The Renters’ Rights Act will remove fixed-term assured tenancies. All assured tenancies moving forward will be periodic, with tenants able to stay in their home until they decide to end the tenancy by giving two months’ notice. The Renters’ Rights Act will also abolish section 21 evictions, meaning landlords must instead use a section 8 ground for possession – these are specific circumstances in which a landlord can regain possession. 

Tenancies commencing from 1st May 2026

Any new assured tenancies that commence from the 1st May 2026 will be governed by the new rules. All tenancies will need to have a written tenancy agreement in future, that includes specific information.  

When you create your new tenancies, you'll soon see a new agreement type available for you to select - Assured Periodic Tenancy:

 By default, this agreement type will set your review/renewal date for 12 month's time for you to be able to manage and review any future rent increases. The term expiry will stay blank (as there is no fixed term). And the Term Type will be Periodical.

For Compliant Letters and Agreements users; the new Periodic Tenancy Agreements should be available from the 2nd April. Please refer to the below FAQ on the release of the 2026 letters:

What are the changes to the Compliant Documents for 2026?

Existing Assured tenancies under a fixed term agreement

Existing assured tenancies will convert to the new system automatically. Landlords won’t need to change, or re-issue existing written tenancy agreements. Instead, they will need to provide tenants with a copy of a government-produced information sheet, explaining how the reforms may have affected the tenancy. That Information Sheet can be found here.

For Compliant Letters and Agreements users, please see the below FAQ on sending this information out:

Sending Out The Government Information Sheet

For anyone who doesn't subscribe to the Compliant Letters and Agreements, please see the below FAQ on emailing tenants in bulk:

*** COMING SOON ****

It will also be good housekeeping to review your existing assured tenancies that are under a fixed term, and amend any that require it. We've created you some new Quicklinks for your fully managed tenancies: "My/Office/Group Fully Managed Fixed Term Tenancies" that you might want to work from, ensuring that the review/renewal date is set correctly to allow you to manage any rent increases moving forward (as you'll no longer be reviewing these on the term expiry date). You may want to remove the term expiry date. And also ensure the term type is amended.

Rent Increases

Landlords will be able to increase rents once per year to the market rate – the price that would be achieved if the property was newly advertised to let. To do this, they will need to serve a simple ‘section 13’ notice, setting out the new rent and giving at least 2 months’ notice of it taking effect. If a tenant believes the proposed rent increase exceeds market rate, they can then challenge this at the First-tier Tribunal, who will determine what the market rent should be.

This doesn't change much in terms of managing your rent increases in Expert Agent, but if you haven't been doing this thus far, you will need to ensure you have an event type set up for this in your configuration. (Accessed by a Super User, under tools - configuration - setup prompts - Event Types)

You will use your "review/renewal date" to manage those tenancies that are due for a potential rent increase. You have Quicklinks available to manage these such as "office review/renewal within 90 days" highlighted below that you can keep an eye on from your tenancies dashboard/homepage/right hand tool bar as you do with all other Quicklinks to monitor any required tenancies.

From your chosen tenancy Quicklink, you can open your tenancy record and forward the date on if no action is required. For any tenancy that requires a rent increase, right click - outputs - create letter/email/SMS to produce your section 13 and send it to the tenant as normal.

We'd then suggest via the events tab of the tenancy you create a new event to record the details of the S13.

 Including the date of the last increase, date of the first increase after Feb 2003, the date the new rent will start etc. You may want to attach any comparables you produced to confirm the figure for the new rent, and if you use Expert Agent Finance, we'd recommend you set yourself a task for the rent date BEFORE the rent increase is due to take effect, to remind yourself to go back into the tenancy and amend the rent amount so that it charges correctly.

Once you have this event, you can come back into it at any time to attach any correspondence/add any further details into the notes, should the tenant dispute the increase for example.

Once the increase has been successfully applied, you can forward the Review/Renewal date on.

You'll also be able to filter the tenancy events on your Rent Increase event type to view any historic rent increases to assist you in serving future increases and managing the property moving forward.

Pet Requests

The Renters’ Rights Act will ensure landlords do not unreasonably withhold consent when a tenant requests to have a pet in their home, with the tenant able to challenge unfair decisions.

To record a request by a tenant to have a pet in the property, you'll want to log an event on your tenancy.  

First of all, you will need to ensure you have an event type set up for this in your configuration. (Accessed by a Super User, under tools - configuration - setup prompts - Event Types)

Once you have this event type created, from the tenancy record - events tab - use the new event button in the bottom left to create your new event:

From here, you can include the details you need. Select the correct event type. Add the notes surrounding the request (you can also add any notes you'd like to be available to the landlord on their portal if you use this). You may wish to upload a copy of the letter/email from the tenant. You can also set a task for yourself/the negotiator responsible for the property to deal with the request by which can then be managed as with all Tasks within Expert Agent.

Rental Bidding

The Renters’ Rights Act will outlaw rental bidding. Asking prices are required to be published and you'll be prohibited from asking for, encouraging, or accepting any bids above this price.

To assist you with this, when creating your tenancies, if the rental figure you are entering, exceeds the advertised price, you'll be presented with an alert warning you as such:

PRS Database and PRS Landlord Ombudsman

The government will introduce a new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman Service, which all private landlords in England with assured or regulated tenancies will be required by law to join, including those who use a managing agent. Alongside this, the act will also introduce a new Private Rented Sector Database. All landlords of assured and regulated tenancies will be legally required to register themselves and their properties on the database and could be subject to penalties if they market or let out a property without registering it and providing the required information. This is scheduled as "phase 2" which there is no set date for at present, but is expected in late 2026. We'll provide an update on managing this in Expert Agent closer to the time. 

The Letting Centre are currently updating their Schedule of Forms for 2026. This will be available shortly!

The Letting Centre have now published their phase 1 schedule of changes for 2026.

For users of the Compliant Letters and Agreements, you can find the full details of these changes on your Compliant Letters and Agreements tab, by searching for the document "LC - Schedule Of Changes 2026 - Phase 1"

Phase 1 contains the updated management letters and forms, along with Guarantor Agreements and Example Agent Agreement.

PLEASE NOTE: This does not contain the new Periodic Tenancy Agreement, this is expected to be released on the 2nd April.