Reforms to renters’ rights have finally become law – five years and four prime ministers after they were first promised.

The legislation that received Royal Assent today is Labour’s version, after the party took office with a promise to improve and complete the set of proposals the Tories pledged then watered down, then abandoned altogether before the general election last year.

Previously it was known as the Renters’ Reform Bill, but Labour renamed it as the Renters’ Rights Bill.

Following Royal Assent, it is now known as the Renters’ Rights Act.

It aims to “decisively level the playing field between landlords and tenants”, according to housing minister Matthew Pennycook.

However there is one more crucial date – the commencement date – which is when the measures will actually take effect.

We don’t know when that is, but these will be the first changes:

No-fault evictions banned

Crucially, the legislation includes a blanket ban on no-fault evictions under Section 21 (S21) of the 1988 Housing Act.

S21 notices have allowed landlords to evict tenants with two months’ notice without providing a reason.

Housing campaigners say they are a major contributing factor to rising homelessness.

Former Conservative prime minister Theresa May made the pledge to scrap S21 notices on 15 April 2019, and it was also in her successor Boris Johnson’s manifesto.

But the Tories went on to announce an indefinite delay to the plan to ban them, pending court reforms, following pressure from backbench landlord MPs.

After the general election, Labour confirmed in its first King’s Speech that it would end no fault evictions for both new and existing tenancies.

Mr Pennycook has said that this means landlords will not be able to “arbitrarily evict any tenant with a Section 21 notice, including tenants that make complaints about things like damp and mould, rather than fix those problems”.

Landlords will still be able to evict tenants if they have a legal reason, such as if the tenant is in several months’ rent arrears or commits anti-social behaviour.

Fixed-term tenancies ended

The Act has removed fixed-term tenancies, so that all agreements are “periodic”.

This will give tenants the flexibility to move if there is a change of circumstance or they aren’t happy with the standard of accommodation. Instead of having to stay until a specified end date, tenants will be required to give two months notice if they wish to move out.

Landlord notice periods

When a landlord’s circumstance changes, such as their need to sell up or move into the property, they will have to give four months’ notice instead of two.

All renters will get a 12-month protected period at the beginning of a tenancy, during which landlords cannot evict them on these grounds.

What are the longer term changes?

There are a range of further reforms that will come in after the new tenancy system is implemented. These are:

Awaab’s law extended

Awaab’s Law was named after the toddler who died after exposure to mould in his family’s social rented home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

It proposed that social landlords will have to investigate hazards within 14 days, fix them within a further seven, and make emergency repairs within 24 hours. .

Under Labour’s Renters’ Rights Act, this will be extended to the private sector to ensure all landlords speedily address hazards and make homes safe.

Plans to make homes safer also include applying a Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector for the first time.

The government said 21% of privately rented homes are currently classified as “non-decent” and more than 500,000 contain the most serious hazards.

Landlords who fail to address serious hazards will be fined up to £7,000 by local councils and may face prosecution for non-compliance, the government said.

A new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman will also be introduced to “provide quick and binding resolutions” about complaints, alongside a database to help landlords understand their legal obligations and demonstrate compliance.

Ban on mid-tenancy rent increases

The Act has also banned rent increases being written into contracts to prevent mid-tenancy hikes, leaving landlords only able to raise rent once a year at the market rate.

Rent campaigners want the government to go further and introduce rent controls amid a spiralling affordability crisis.

Analysis of government figures by housing charity Shelter found England’s private renters paid an extra £473 million pounds every month on rent in 2024 – an average of £103 more per month than they were paying in 2023.

Labour has ruled out rent controls, saying their plan to build more homes will bring prices down.

Powers to challenge rent hikes

However the government said they will make it easier for people to challenge excessive rent hikes which could force them out.

This will be done by reforming the First Tier Tribunal so it can’t actually demand more than what the landlord initially asked for when tenants complain.

The government will also end backdated increases if the watchdog rules in the landlords’ favour, and allow rent increases to be deferred by two months in cases of hardship.

Allowing pets

Labour’s reforms have also given tenants the strengthened right to request a pet, which landlords must consider and cannot unreasonably refuse.

There are currently no specific laws in place when it comes to renting with pets, but landlords can decline if they have a valid reason.

To support landlords, the Renters’ Rights Act has provided them with the right to request insurance to cover potential damage from pets if needed.

Bidding wars crackdown

The reforms also crack down on bidding wars between potential tenants.

Bidding wars for rental properties have become increasingly common amid a chronic shortage of supply, with tenants typically paying an extra £100 a month above the asking price for their home last year, according to research by the New Economics Foundation.

The legislation includes a legal requirement for landlords and letting agents to publish the required rent for a property.

Landlords and agents will be banned from “asking for, encouraging, or accepting any bids” above the publicly stated price.

Similar laws have been passed in other countries facing a housing crisis, such as New Zealand.

Limit on rent in advance

Bidding wars have also led to some people offering months of rent in advance to ensure they get the property. Under the new laws, landlords can only ask for up to one month’s rent upfront once you’ve signed a tenancy agreement. They will be banned from encouraging or accepting any more.

Read More:
What could tackle ‘out of control’ rent prices?
Average rents hit another record high

Follow Sky News on WhatsApp

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Tap here

Ban on benefit discrimination

The Act also outlaws landlords imposing a blanket ban on tenants receiving benefits or with children.

According to Shelter, one in five families have been unable to rent somewhere in England because they have kids.

Meanwhile, the English Private Landlord Survey, covering the period of 2021 to 2022, found one in 10 private renters – around 109,000 households – had been refused a tenancy because they received benefits.

While specific cases of this have been found to have breached the Equality Act in court, the new law will explicitly ban these forms of discrimination “to ensure fair access to housing for all”.

The prime minister has said the migrant who was mistakenly released from prison and found again will be deported following an error that Reform UK likened to a “Monty Python sketch”.

Sir Keir Starmer said police officers had worked “quickly and diligently to bring him back into custody” and that the government had “ordered an investigation to establish what went wrong”.

Politics latest: UK in ‘despair’, warns Streeting

Hadush Kebatu, who was found guilty in September of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping, was freed in error from HMP Chelmsford in Essex on Friday instead of being handed over to immigration officials for deportation.

His accidental release sparked widespread alarm and a manhunt that resulted in him being found and arrested by the Metropolitan Police in the Finsbury Park area of London at around 8.30am on Sunday.

The incident has sparked questions over how the man – whose crimes sparked protests in Epping over the use of asylum hotels – was able to be freed.

Opposition parties have said the government has “serious questions” to answer over the incident.

Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, said that while he was “relieved” Kebatu had been re-arrested, the case was a sign of Britain’s “descent into a Monty Python sketch”.

He referred to a Sky News report detailing how the wanted migrant spoke to a delivery driver at Chelmsford prison and appeared “confused” at why he had been released.

“This is a man who the eyewitnesses said was actively trying to go back into prison after being accidentally let go,” Mr Yusuf said.

He said the case was “absolutely shocking” and questioned how victims of sexual assault could have confidence in the government.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said Kebatu should “never have been released in the first place” and called on the home secretary and justice secretary to apologise.

Pressed on the state of the prison system during the Conservatives’ 14 years in power, Mr Philp said: “They’ve been in charge now for almost a year and a half, so I think they do have to take responsibility for the system.

“This failing with the release of this man by accident happened under the Labour government and, as I say, I think the justice secretary and home secretary should apologise.”

Their concerns were echoed by Marie Goldman, the Liberal Democrat MP for Chelmsford, who told Sky News the incident was a sign of “systemic failure”.

She said she had spoken to the prison service and had been told to expect the initial findings into what went wrong “pretty quickly”.

“We had figures from His Majesty’s Prison Probation Service saying that 262 prisoners were released in error in the year leading to March of this year,” she said.

“That shows that it’s a systemic failure. This is happening all over the country.”

Read more:
Timeline of how manhunt for Hadush Kebatu unfolded
20 warnings for Sir Keir Starmer from new deputy leader

Commander James Conway praised the “diligent and fast paced investigation” that led to Kebatu’s arrest and revealed it was information from the public that led officers to Finsbury Park, where he was discovered.

Speaking on Sky News before Kebatu was found, Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Trevor Phillips that Justice Secretary David Lammy had commissioned an investigation into what had gone wrong.

“We know that one prison officer has been suspended already, but there does need to be accountability for such an egregious failure,” he added.

Nigel Farage has said he is “unhappy” with his MP, Sarah Pochin, for making comments that have been widely condemned as racist.

The Reform UK leader was asked to give his view on Ms Pochin after she told a viewer on Talk TV that it “drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.

Politics latest: Starmer ‘angry’ after report reveals ‘billions’ wasted on asylum hotels

Ms Pochin, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, said such adverts did not “reflect our society” and added: “I feel that your average white person, average white family is… not represented any more.”

She has since apologised for her remarks and said they were “poorly phrased”.

However, she said the point she was trying to make was that advertising had gone “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] mad” and adverts were now “unrepresentative of British society as a whole”.

Sir Keir Starmer has said he believes her comments are an example of “shocking racism” that could “tear our country apart”.

“It tells you everything about Reform,” the prime minister told the BBC.

“Nigel Farage has got some questions to answer because either he doesn’t consider it racist, which in my view is shocking in itself, or he does think it’s racist and he’s shown absolutely no leadership.

“I’m the prime minister of the whole of our country – our reasonable, tolerant, diverse country – and I want to serve the whole country. He can’t even call out racism.”

Speaking at a press conference in Westminster, Mr Farage said Ms Pochin’s suggestion that there were too many black and Asian people in adverts was “ugly” and “taken on their own could be read to be very, very unpleasant indeed”.

“I am unhappy with what she has done,” he said.

However, he echoed previous comments made by Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, who said her comments had to be “put into context” and people must be able to “talk about” representation in television advertising.

Mr Farage agreed, saying Ms Pochin’s comments came in the context of “DEI madness” and were not “racist”.

He added: “I understand the basic point, but the way she put it, the way she worded it, was wrong and was ugly, and if I thought that the intention behind it was racist, I would have taken a lot more action than I have to date.”

Mr Farage was speaking during a press conference in Westminster in which he said parliament needed to “step up” and form a commission to intervene in the grooming gang scandal.

He was joined by child sexual abuse survivor Ellie-Ann Reynolds, who resigned from the inquiry’s victims and survivors liaison panel over concerns that racial and religious motivations were being downplayed.

It comes as the inquiry established by the government faces pressure after a group of survivors quit the inquiry and said they would only rejoin it on the condition that safeguarding minister Jess Phillips resigned.

Ms Phillips is facing calls to resign after she was accused of trying to expand the inquiry’s scope beyond grooming gangs.

Read more:
Stronger oversight of social media needed to protect MPs
What is Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill?

A separate group of survivors wrote to the prime minister to say they will only continue to work with the inquiry if Ms Phillips remains in post.

Sir Keir has defended Ms Phillips, saying he had “confidence” in her and she had “devoted” her life to tackling violence against women and girls.

He has also written to some of the survivors asking them to rejoin the inquiry.

Appearing at a press conference in central London, the Reform UK leader said he would be speaking to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle and would write to the Home Affairs Select Committee about parliament using its “extraordinary powers” to investigate the scandal.

He suggested both the House of Lords and the House of Commons could be involved in a “commission”.

“Here is the most enormous opportunity for parliament, and indeed for this government, to restore some public trust in the institution and those that currently inhabit it on an issue that has been gnawing away at our public consciences for well over a decade,” he said.