Since 1 May 2026 a court cannot make a possession order against your tenant if the deposit was never properly protected — whatever the ground, however far behind the rent is, with only serious anti-social behaviour excepted. Most landlords find this out at the hearing. An audit finds it out first.
This is the part most landlords have not absorbed, and it is why an audit written before May 2026 is worth very little. Section 21 is gone, and with it the old rule that a missing gas record or an unissued How to Rent guide could sink a notice. Different requirements bite now, and they bite harder — because section 8 is the only route left.
These remain legal obligations with their own penalties, and you should still meet every one of them. What they no longer do is invalidate your route to possession.
These are not penalties. They are bars. Get one wrong and the court has no discretion to help you, no matter how strong the ground.
Grounds 7A and 14 — serious anti-social behaviour — are carved out of the deposit restriction. So the only tenant you can still remove with an unprotected deposit is a tenant behaving criminally. For rent arrears, for sale, for moving back in, for redevelopment: the bar applies. And curing the breach later does not retrospectively validate a notice you served while it existed, so the safe order is always protect, serve, then notice.
Take one property. Answer honestly — including “not sure”, which is a finding in its own right, because a document you cannot produce is a document you do not have. The scorecard rebuilds as you go and nothing is sent anywhere.
Work down the list on the left. The verdict, the score and the exposure all update live.
Every figure here is a real statutory amount. None of them is a prediction — nobody receives all of them at once, and a tribunal will usually award less than the maximum. The number that matters most is not on this card: it is whether a court can help you at all.
A surveyor looks at the building. We look at the paper trail, which is what a council officer, a tribunal or a defending solicitor will look at. The output is a single document per property: what is right, what is wrong, what it exposes you to and what to do first.
Amount against the cap, the date it reached the scheme, the prescribed information and the evidence it was served, and whether the protection survived every renewal and every change of tenant. This is where the possession bar lives, so it is where we start.
The written statement of terms for tenancies from 1 May 2026, and the information sheet that was due to existing tenants by 31 May 2026 — a deadline that has passed, which means a missed one is a breach you are carrying now rather than a risk ahead of you.
Gas safety within twelve months and served on the tenant. An EICR within five years with a copy issued. A smoke alarm on every storey and a carbon monoxide alarm in every room with a fixed combustion appliance. Dates, documents and proof of issue — not just the certificate in a drawer.
Whether this address needs a mandatory, additional or selective licence today, whether the one you hold covers the occupancy you actually have, and whether the room sizes and amenity standards attached to it are being met.
Whether the property was advertised at a stated rent and nothing above it accepted, whether more than one month’s rent was taken in advance, whether any blanket rule or lease or insurance term excludes benefit claimants or families, and how pet requests were answered.
Whether the check was done before the tenancy began, whether it was done in a way that establishes the statutory excuse, and whether the evidence still exists in a form you could produce. A new code of practice takes effect on 1 October 2026.
The current rating, the exemptions register, and what the October 2026 methodology change is likely to do to it — which matters because EPC C by 1 October 2030 is a single deadline with a £10,000 cap, and spend from 1 October 2025 counts toward it.
Not a hundred-page report. The things that bar possession first, the things that carry a penalty second, the things that are merely untidy last — each with what it takes to close it and, where it needs a qualified person, who that person is.
Four questions. We will come back with what we would check on your property, what it costs and how quickly we can do it — and if the test above came out clean, we will tell you an audit is not worth your money.
An audit runs property by property, but the price per property falls sharply once there is more than one.
Choose as many as apply. It changes what we look at hardest and how quickly we need to move.
The council matters here — licensing schemes are local, and so is enforcement appetite. A postcode district is plenty.
No charge for the conversation and no obligation. If the property is in good order we will say so and leave you alone.
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Send this on WhatsAppYes, and it is the change landlords are most often surprised by. From 1 May 2026 the court may only make a possession order where the deposit is held in an authorised scheme, the scheme’s initial requirements were complied with and the prescribed information was given. Grounds 7A and 14 — serious anti-social behaviour — are the only carve-out. So a tenant three months in arrears with an unprotected deposit is a tenant you cannot remove until you have fixed it, and fixing it does not rescue a notice you served beforehand. If you take one thing from this page, take that.
No — and this is the mirror image of the last answer, which is why old advice is now actively misleading. Under the section 21 regime a missing gas record or an unissued How to Rent guide could invalidate a notice. Section 21 no longer exists, and those requirements are not preconditions of a section 8 claim. They remain legal obligations with their own penalties, and the gas one is a criminal offence, so this is emphatically not permission to let it slide. It simply is not the thing standing between you and your property.
Price depends on the property and we will quote before we start. The honest test is what you are protecting: a blocked possession claim on a tenant in arrears costs you the arrears, the legal fees, and the months it takes to cure and start again — and the average claim already takes something over eight months from issue to repossession. Against that, an audit is small. If the possession test above came out clean, tell us and we will say you do not need one.
Effectively, yes, and this is where we find the most serious problems. The deposit has to be protected and the prescribed information given, and if that did not happen properly before you bought, the position you inherit is the one the court looks at. The same applies to licensing, which does not travel with the property automatically. Anyone buying tenanted stock should treat the compliance file as part of the due diligence rather than something to look at afterwards.
Mostly, and quickly. Re-protecting a deposit, serving prescribed information, ordering an EICR, applying for a licence and drafting a written statement of terms are all things we do. Some findings cannot be undone — a missed 31 May 2026 information sheet deadline has already been missed, and rent taken in advance above the cap has already been taken. In those cases the useful work is limiting the consequence and making sure it does not repeat. We will tell you plainly which category each finding falls into.
The Renters’ Rights Act is an England statute. Wales runs occupation contracts under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act with Rent Smart Wales registration and licensing; Scotland runs landlord registration, private residential tenancies, the repairing standard and mandatory short-term let licensing. The underlying idea — that the paperwork decides what you can do — holds in all three, but the specific checks differ. Tell us where the property is and we will audit against the right regime.
By then it is not a gap, it is a defence — and the tenant’s solicitor will find it whether or not you did. An audit costs a fraction of one blocked possession claim, and most of what it finds takes an afternoon to fix.
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