For five months the Renters' Rights Act has mostly been a reading exercise. New rules, new forms, plenty of guidance. Now councils are putting numbers on it. Chesterfield Borough Council has fined a letting agent £8,652 under the Act, and one of the two things the agent got wrong was standard practice a year ago.
Here is what happened, as reported this month. Tenants moved into a rented home and, shortly afterwards, complained to the council about its condition. When the council investigated, it found the agent had put them on a six-month fixed-term agreement. Fixed terms have been banned since 1 May, so that was the first penalty. The second came because the agent told the tenants to leave when they said they intended to complain. Two penalties, £8,652 in total, reduced to £7,354.20 because the agent paid within the council's deadline. The council also served an improvement notice on the property, so the repairs have to be done regardless. It has not named the agency.
Three things in that story matter more than the headline figure.
Nobody went looking for the fixed term. The council turned up because of a complaint about the state of the place, and the tenancy agreement was simply part of what it looked at. I expect a lot of enforcement to arrive this way. One complaint about damp or a boiler, and your whole file is on the table.
The fixed term was probably habit. I do not know why the agent issued a six-month agreement, but my guess is an old template that nobody updated. That is the uncomfortable part, because plenty of us have one of those sitting in a folder.
Telling a tenant to go is no longer something you can do in conversation. The only way to end a tenancy now is a Section 8 notice, on a proper ground, in the proper form. A text, an email or a word on the doorstep saying it is time to move on is not a notice. Said to a tenant who has just raised a complaint, it is the kind of thing a council can fine.
On the size of the penalties, the government's own guide to the Act says councils can charge up to £7,000 for a first or minor breach and up to £40,000 for serious or repeated ones, with prosecution as the alternative. Those powers reach landlords and anyone acting for them.
So here are five checks I would run this week.
Open the tenancy agreement that you, or your agent, would hand to the next tenant. If it has a six or twelve month term in it, bin it. Every new tenancy is periodic from day one.
End a tenancy one way only. Section 8, the right ground, the right form, the right notice period. Never by text, and never in the middle of an argument.
Treat a complaint as a repair job. Log it, reply in writing, fix it, and keep the dates. A tenant who complains is not a tenant to move on.
Raise the rent once a year at most, through a Section 13 notice with two months' warning. A rent review clause in the agreement no longer does the job.
Ask your agent to show you what goes out in your name. The agreement, the notices, the rent increase letters. In Chesterfield it was the agent who was fined, but it is still your property and your tenant.
From my own portfolio: last month I drew up a new agreement for a room let. Before I filled anything in, I logged into my landlord association's site and downloaded the current version of their template that day. That is now a rule for me. No tenancy gets drawn up from a saved copy until I have checked whether a newer one exists. It takes five minutes. The saved copy is the dangerous one, because it looks finished and it was right when I filed it. A template goes out of date quietly, and you only find out when somebody official reads it.
The temptation is to read this as an agent's problem, or a Chesterfield problem. I would not. Every council in England has the same powers, and councils keep the money from these penalties to pay for more enforcement. They have every reason to use them.
The takeaway: councils are now fining under the Renters' Rights Act, and in this case it began with a tenant's complaint about conditions. A fixed term in the agreement and telling the tenants to leave cost one agent £8,652. Check your template, end tenancies only through Section 8, fix what tenants report, raise rent once a year by the proper notice, and know what your agent sends in your name.
I am a landlord, not a solicitor, so take advice on your own situation. And if you know a landlord whose agent has used the same paperwork for years, send them this. It is a cheaper way to find out than a letter from the council.