Renters' Rights Act: What We Are Doing

Overview

In preparation for the Renters’ Rights Act (RRA) coming into force on May 1st, we are making a number of updates across the system to ensure compliance and to support agents in managing residential lettings under the new legislation.

This article outlines the changes we are making to the software - for detailed guidance on Act itself, please refer to the following Government article: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guide-to-the-renters-rights-act/guide-to-the-renters-rights-act.

Removal of fixed-term tenancies

The RRA will remove fixed-term assured tenancies, replacing them with periodic (rolling) monthly tenancies (Assured Periodic Tenancies, APTs), where the period cannot exceed a month. This will apply to existing tenancies as well as new tenancies.

Existing Lettings

A toolkit will be available to bulk-convert all selected fixed-term lettings to periodic, with the end date updated to rolling from May 1st. It will remove the term and allow the payment frequency to be changed to monthly where it is currently longer than monthly (e.g. quarterly).
This saves you having to do this one at a time, but ensures that any company lets, commercial lettings, lodger leases are not affected.

New Lettings

All new lettings will default to monthly, periodic.
Note, if you only manage commercial lettings, this can be changed as required.

Tenancy agreements

Existing tenancy agreement templates will need to be reviewed to ensure compliance with the RRA. In particular, it will be an offence to refer to a fixed term or end date, and new agreements will need to include a statement of prescribed terms.

The sample Tenancy Agreement provided historically on the system will not be compliant and will be updated to indicate that it shouldn't be used after the May 1st. We will no longer provide this sample in new systems.
If you are using your own tenancy agreement template within the software, you will need to review this and likely update it with a compliant version.
To help with this, we have partnered with Training For Professionals, the largest provider of lettings legislation training across England and Wales. They provide Tenancy Agreement and Management Forms packs with fully compliant templates that are updated free of charge as legislation changes. If you mention that you are using 10ninety, you will be entitled to a 25% discount on either pack. We can then add tagged versions of their master templates (non-customised) into your system free of charge. Their updated packs, fully compliant for the RRA impacts, should be available from the end of March 2026.
For existing tenancies, the Government will be providing an information sheet (similar to the How To Rent Guide) that needs to be issued to existing tenants. Once available (likely March 2026), this can then be uploaded to company documents in your 10ninety system, and bulk emailed out to existing tenants via the lettings list page.

Rental discrimination

It will be an offence to prevent a tenant from renting if they have children or receive benefits payments.

We will be removing any features or restrictions in the system that refer to "No Children" or "No DSS".
You will need to review your rental listings (e.g. summaries, full descriptions, custom features) to ensure they are compliant.
Landlords will only be able to refuse pets if they have a reasonable reason (for example, if the head lease prohibits pets), in which case it would still be valid to advertise "no pets".

Rental bidding

It will be an offence to accept offers over the advertised rent, or promote bidding wars – the advert sets the ceiling on the rent.

We will update the system to provide an on-screen error message if an offer/letting is added with rent above the current marketed rent.
You should check the wording on your current listings to remove “offers in excess of” in the summary or description.

Rental increases

Rent increases will not be allowed in tenancy agreements, and instead all increases will need to use the Section 13 process. It will only be possible to increase the rent once per year, to market rate, and it requires two months' notice.

The latest Section 13 notice template will be added to the system.
The system will default the rent review date to 12 months after letting start date for new tenancies.
The “Periodic Tenancies With Rent Review Due” alert will be updated to trigger 2.5 months before the rent review date, so that there is time to issue the section 13 if required.
We will update the system to indicate when the last rent increase was when applying a new rent increase on the rent schedule

Possession

Section 21 notices will be abolished, and replaced with an updated Section 8.

We will remove Section 21 from new systems, and on existing systems update the Section 21 so that it cannot be used (if deleted, it would remove the history of any previous S21 notices that had been issued).
For certain Section 8 grounds (e.g. 1 and 1A), you can’t serve notice on these grounds for the first 12 months of tenancy (the protected period), and can’t re-market or re-let the property within the notice period and a 12-month restricted period from the notice expiry date (so in total 16 months from serving notice)
We will add a restricted period end date to the system, and check against this when re-marketing the property or adding lettings.