Nine days remain before the 31 May deadline for private residential landlords in England to deliver the Information Sheet required under Phase 1 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025.
As the date approaches, UK platform for private residential landlord operations, LeaseSafe, says three operational misconceptions are recurring consistently in queries from landlords.
Phase 1 of the Act took effect on 1 May 2026. The Information Sheet is a written information statement that must be delivered to every existing tenant, whether by post, email, or in person. The document is available free from gov.uk.
Failure to deliver it carries fines of up to £7,000 per tenancy, rising to £40,000 for continued non-compliance.
There is no central register tracking delivery; enforcement sits with local authority housing teams, acting on tenant complaints.
"The Information Sheet alone is the cheapest mistake in the Act to avoid," said Richard Offenbach, founder of LeaseSafe. "It is a free PDF that has to land with each tenant by the end of the month, and a meaningful number of landlords will miss the deadline simply because they didn't realise it existed. Nine days is enough time, but it requires action this week, not the last Sunday in May."
Three gaps appear in landlord queries
The first is a misunderstanding of who carries the delivery obligation. Many landlords still believe it falls to their letting agent rather than themselves. In the majority of agency arrangements, it does not. Standard agent terms typically do not cover new statutory requirements, meaning the obligation sits with the landlord directly. Those using fully managed agency services should confirm the position with their agent in writing this week.
The second gap involves pet requests being handled informally. The Act prescribes a 28-day written-decision process for tenant pet requests, with specific reasoning required for any refusal.
A significant share of queries to LeaseSafe describe these exchanges happening verbally, by text, WhatsApp, or on the doorstep, rather than through the written process the Act now requires. A tenant who later disputes the outcome can challenge it on procedural grounds alone, regardless of the substance of the decision.
The third concerns Section 21 notices issued before 1 May 2026. These remain valid only through 31 July 2026. Notices with effective dates approaching that window will lapse and require reissuing under the new statutory possession grounds if the landlord still intends to proceed. Affected landlords have approximately ten weeks to act.
Offenbach said the patterns were not indicative of deliberate non-compliance. "The three patterns we keep seeing aren't bad-faith landlords cutting corners. They're good landlords applying the old playbook to a new framework.
"Pet requests handled by text, Information Sheets assumed to be the agent's job, Section 21 notices in a holding pattern, all reasonable under the previous rules, all exposed under the new ones."
