Your tenancy agreement since May 2026

Every new tenancy started since 1 May 2026 has to be accompanied by a written statement of terms, and the tenancy agreement most landlords were using before that date is no longer fit to issue. Some of its clauses simply have no effect now. A few of them are unlawful. The document still looks perfectly respectable, which is the problem, because nothing about it announces that the regime it was drafted for has gone.

We see this most often with landlords who have one or two properties and a Word file that has served them well since about 2019. It gets a name and address change and goes out again. That habit was harmless for years. It is not harmless now.

What the written statement has to cover

The Renters' Rights Act requires you to give the tenant a written statement of the terms of the tenancy. In practice most landlords meet this by issuing a properly drafted agreement that contains the required information, rather than by producing a separate document alongside a stale contract.

The statement needs to set out the basic facts of the letting clearly enough that the tenant can see what they are agreeing to:

• the names of the landlord and the tenant or tenants, and an address in England at which notices can be served on the landlord
• the address of the property being let
• the date the tenancy begins
• the rent, the amount of each payment, when it is due and the length of the rental period, since the tenancy now rolls on that period rather than a fixed term
• the deposit, the scheme it will be protected in and how it will be dealt with
• who is responsible for repairs and how the tenant reports them
• any agreement about pets, and any other terms specific to this letting

None of that will be a surprise. What catches people out is the assumption that a document containing all of it is therefore compliant, when the same document also contains three or four clauses that stopped meaning anything on 1 May 2026.

The government's overview of the Act for landlords is the right starting point if you have not read anything official since the spring. Our own guide to what the Renters' Rights Act changed for landlords covers the wider picture.

Verbal lettings need one too

A tenancy agreed on a handshake is still a tenancy. It always was. What has changed is that the absence of paperwork is now a failure in itself rather than just a bad idea.

If you let to a relative, a friend, or a tenant you have had for years on nothing more than an understanding, you need a written statement of the terms of that tenancy. This is common in South Yorkshire with long standing family lets, and it tends to be exactly the arrangement nobody wants to formalise. Do it anyway. It protects the tenant, and it protects you far more, because a dispute about a verbal tenancy is a dispute about two people's recollections.

The clauses in your old template that no longer work

This is the useful part. Below are the ones we see most.

Fixed term clauses

A twelve month term, a six month term, a break clause at month four, an end date, a renewal provision. All of it is now dead wording. Every assured tenancy is periodic, rolling from one rent period to the next with no end date, and nothing you write into an agreement changes that. Existing fixed terms converted automatically on 1 May 2026.

Leaving the wording in is worse than pointless. It tells a tenant they are committed until a date they are not committed to, and if they act on that belief you have a problem you did not need. We go through the practical effects in more detail in our post on how periodic tenancies work now.

Anything referring to Section 21

Section 21 no fault eviction is abolished. Any clause mentioning it, any reference to a notice requiring possession at the end of the term, any wording about the landlord's right to recover the property on two months' notice without a reason, all of it is misleading. 31 July 2026 was the final deadline for Section 21 claim forms before existing notices lapsed. There is nothing left to point at.

Possession is now available only on the revised Section 8 grounds, several of which carry four months' notice.

Rent review clauses

Annual uplift clauses, index linked increases, "the rent shall increase by such amount as the landlord may reasonably determine". These were drafted for a different regime and they do not give you a route around the current rules.

Rent can be increased once a year at most, using Form 4A, with at least two months' notice, and the tenant can challenge an increase above open market rent at tribunal. That is the only route. A clause in a 2023 agreement does not create a second one. If you believe your agreement is genuinely an exception, that is a question for a solicitor rather than something to decide from a template.

Blanket pet bans

"No pets shall be kept at the property under any circumstances." That clause is no longer enforceable in the way it reads. Tenants may request a pet and you can only refuse with a valid reason, considered on the facts of the particular request rather than as a standing policy.

Replace it with wording that reflects the actual position: pets by request, considered on their merits, with a written response either way. Keep a record of your reasoning if you do refuse. If it ever gets tested, the reasoning is the whole case.

No benefits and no children clauses

Discrimination against applicants receiving benefits or with children is prohibited. If your agreement, your advertising, or your instructions to an agent still contain wording of this kind, remove it now. This is not a technicality about a clause that no longer bites. It is unlawful, and unlike the fixed term wording it can create a live problem before a tenancy even starts.

The same applies to the phrasing in your listings. "Professionals only" and "no DSS" belong to a period that has ended.

The information sheet duty

Alongside the tenancy agreement, new tenants must be given the government information sheet explaining their rights under the Act. Existing tenants had to be given it by 31 May 2026. If that one slipped past you, serve it now and keep a dated record of how you sent it.

The information sheet is published on gov.uk and takes a minute to download. Send it with the agreement, note the date, and keep the email. Build it into your standard pack so it cannot be forgotten.

Rent in advance before the agreement is signed

This one is worth stating plainly because the old practice was so normal. You cannot request, encourage or accept rent in advance before the tenancy agreement has been signed.

Not as a way of securing the property. Not as a gesture from an applicant who wants to stand out. Not because the tenant offered and you did not ask. Accepting it is the breach, whoever suggested it. The same thinking sits behind the ban on rental bidding, which makes it illegal to encourage or accept offers above the advertised rent.

If you take a holding deposit, keep it as a holding deposit, with the terms in writing, and do not let it drift into being described as a first month's rent.

Get a current template rather than editing an old one

The temptation is to open the old file and delete the bits that have stopped working. We would not do that, and we do not advise landlords to do it.

An old agreement is not a list of clauses. It is a structure built around a fixed term and a Section 21 route out of it, and cross references to the removed parts run through it in places you will not spot on a read through. Start from a current template from a reputable source instead. Propertymark member agents have access to current documentation, and Propertymark is a reasonable place for a self managing landlord to begin looking. A solicitor can supply one too.

Anything unusual belongs with a solicitor rather than with a template or with us. Company lets, lettings to a tenant with a guarantor arrangement you have designed yourself, arrangements involving a lodger or a resident landlord, or any property where the ownership is not straightforward. GMS is a letting agent, not a law firm, and there is a point at which the right answer is legal advice.

Before you issue the next agreement

Read the document you are about to send. Not the covering email, the document. Look for any date that suggests an end to the tenancy, any mention of Section 21, any rent review wording, any absolute pet ban, and any reference to benefits or children. If you find one, you have found them all, because they travel together in templates of the same vintage.

We issue current agreements, serve the information sheet and hold the tenancy paperwork as part of residential lettings across Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield and Barnsley, and the same applies to tenancies we take over mid term under full property management. If you are self managing, at least replace the template. It is the cheapest piece of compliance available to you.