What documents must a landlord give a new tenant in England: the 2026 checklist

If you let a property in England in 2026, the law gives you a small but unforgiving list of documents to put in front of every new tenant before they move in. Skip one and the consequences are not theoretical: with Section 21 abolished on 1 May 2026, most Section 8 possession grounds are blocked until the missing item is served, and any Section 8 ground 1 / 1A possession claim becomes much harder to defend in front of a District Judge.

This is the complete 2026 move-in pack — statute by statute, deadline by deadline, with a clear note on what changes when the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 commences on 1 May 2026.

The five items every England landlord must serve a new tenant

A standard England private letting in 2026 should land in the tenant’s inbox (or hands) with the following pack at, or before, the start of the tenancy:

> Two documents are NOT part of a new tenant’s pack. The How to Rent guide was withdrawn on 1 May 2026. The RRA Information Sheet is a one-off catch-up for tenancies that already existed on 1 May 2026 (deadline was 31 May 2026) — a new tenancy does not get the Information Sheet; it gets the written statement of terms (item 5) instead. More on both below.

A useful mental model: the first four items cover money + safety; item 5 is the RRA information duty for a new tenancy — the written statement of terms.

1. Gas Safety Certificate (CP12)

Statute: Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, regulation 36(6) and (7).

Who issues it: A Gas Safe registered engineer (check at gassaferegister.co.uk).

Service rule: Give the latest CP12 to a new tenant before they move in. Give it to existing tenants within 28 days of each annual inspection.

Penalty for non-service: The HSE can prosecute. Maximum fine is unlimited; in serious cases (including a death) 6 months imprisonment is on the table. An out-of-date or unserved CP12 does not itself bar a Section 8 claim — the only compliance failure that stops a possession order is deposit non-compliance (on every ground but 7A and 14), but it hands the tenant a disrepair argument and weighs against you on any discretionary ground.

Proof landlords forget: A copy in your filing cabinet is not service. The court wants the moment of delivery. Email with a PDF attached and a dated read-receipt (or send via your platform’s audit log) is the cleanest evidence.

2. Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR)

Statute: Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, regulation 3(2)(c).

Frequency: Every 5 years (sooner if the inspector’s recommendation says so).

Service rule: New tenant gets the latest report before move-in. Existing tenants get it within 28 days of issue. The local authority may demand it within 7 days.

Penalty for non-service: Civil penalty up to £30,000 per property, imposed by the local authority. It does not bar a Section 8 claim — deposit non-compliance is the only failure that stops a possession order, but an unserved EICR is a gift to a tenant defending on disrepair, and it counts against you wherever the court weighs reasonableness.

Proof landlords forget: Many landlords share the engineer’s job sheet, not the formal EICR. The certificate must include the property address, inspector name and registration body, and grade every observation C1 / C2 / C3 / FI.

3. Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)

Statute: Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012, regulation 6.

Service rule: Give the EPC to the prospective tenant before they enter into the tenancy. The EPC is valid for 10 years from issue.

MEES overlay: Letting an F or G rated property without a registered exemption is a breach of the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards — fines from £2,000 to £5,000 per property under MEES. Note the confirmed EPC C uplift for all privately rented homes from 1 October 2030.

Penalty for non-service: The Trading Standards officer can issue a £200 fixed penalty per breach. A missing EPC does not bar a Section 8 claim — that restriction attaches to deposit compliance, not to certificates, but it does expose you under MEES, where letting below band E without a registered exemption is separately penalised.

4. Deposit Prescribed Information (PI)

Statute: Housing Act 2004 ss.213–215A and the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007.

Deadline: Within 30 days of receiving the deposit you must (a) protect it in DPS, TDS or mydeposits, and (b) serve the Prescribed Information along with the scheme’s leaflet.

Penalty for non-service: A tenant can apply to the County Court for an order requiring you to pay them between 1× and 3× the deposit. The court has no discretion to reduce it below 1×. You can still serve a Section 8 notice, but the court cannot make a possession order until the deposit is protected in a scheme (or returned to the tenant) and the prescribed information given (Section 21, which this also blocked, was abolished on 1 May 2026).

Proof landlords forget: The certificate from the deposit scheme is evidence the deposit is protected; it is not the Prescribed Information. The PI is a separate signed document with the landlord and tenant details, deposit amount, scheme details, dispute process and what triggers deductions. We bundle it as a generated PDF you can email straight to the tenant.

5. Written tenancy agreement / statement of terms

Statute: Housing Act 1988 section 16D, inserted by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Common law has always preferred a written agreement; from 1 May 2026 this makes it a hard duty: every tenant must have a written statement of tenancy terms setting out rent, deposit, landlord name and address, repair responsibilities and any rules about pets, smoking and altering the property.

Service rule: Before the tenancy is entered into — s.16D(4) is explicit that the statement "must be given before the tenancy is entered into", so "on move-in day" is already late. The 28-day deadline people quote is the exception, not the rule: under s.16D(5)–(7) it applies only where a tenancy becomes assured later — succession, an agricultural worker, or a change of landlord. A tenancy that already existed on 1 May 2026 with no written agreement must also be given the written statement.

Penalty for non-service: A local housing authority may impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000 (Housing Act 1988 s.16I). There is a second sting most landlords miss: under s.16E(1)(f) you cannot rely on Grounds 1B, 2ZA–2ZD, 4, 5–5H, 6A or 18 for possession if no s.16D statement was given for them. And the commercial risk sits underneath both: a tenant who never had written terms can dispute almost any deduction at the end of the tenancy.

6. Renters’ Rights Act 2025 Information Sheet — existing tenancies only

Statute: Renters’ Rights Act 2025 c. 26 — commencement regulations from 1 May 2026.

Who it applies to: This is a one-off catch-up duty, not a new-tenancy document. Every tenancy that already existed on 1 May 2026 with a written agreement had to be given the official Information Sheet by 31 May 2026 (that deadline has passed). A new tenancy granted on or after 1 May 2026 does not get the Information Sheet — it gets the written statement of terms (item 5) before the tenancy is agreed. Verbal-only pre-May tenancies also receive a written statement instead.

Penalty for non-service: A local housing authority may impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000 per breach. Penalties are not automatic — enforcement depends on the facts, but a landlord who missed an existing tenant has nothing to fall back on if challenged.

Proof landlords forget: The Information Sheet is its own published GOV.UK document (The Renters’ Rights Act information sheet 2026); a paragraph in your covering letter is not the same as serving the file. If you still have a pre-May tenant you never served, do it now and keep proof.

What happened to the How to Rent guide?

For years the GOV.UK How to Rent guide was a mandatory move-in document: serving the latest version was a precondition of a valid Section 21 notice under the Deregulation Act 2015.

That ended on 1 May 2026. With Section 21 abolished, GOV.UK withdrew the How to Rent guide and states it is no longer up to date. For any tenancy you grant on or after 1 May 2026, the information duty is the written statement of terms (item 5 above), not How to Rent. (The Information Sheet in item 6 is a separate one-off catch-up that applied only to tenancies already in place on 1 May 2026.)

The one exception: the withdrawn guide is retained for reference where you served a Section 21 notice before 1 May 2026. If that is you, keep the copy you served on file. For every new let, How to Rent is history — the Information Sheet is the current requirement.

What used to invalidate a Section 21 (historical)

Section 21 was abolished for new notices on 1 May 2026. Historically, the Deregulation Act 2015 s.38–41 required the following before a Section 21 notice was valid (the same documents now block most Section 8 possession grounds):

Note the order: serve the documents first, then accept the deposit and let the tenant move in. Trying to backfill the pack the day before you seek possession will not save a Section 8 claim on a blocked ground.

What changes from 1 May 2026 (Renters’ Rights Act 2025)

The RRA does not delete the move-in pack — it strengthens it.

Translation: the move-in pack you served on day one is now load-bearing for the entire tenancy. A landlord who served the full pack at move-in is in a strong position whatever route to possession they later need; a landlord who skipped one item is exposed for years.

How LetCompliance handles this

We built a move-in pack sender for exactly this workflow. On the property page you pick the active tenant, the pack pre-ticks the statutory documents you’ve uploaded, and shows an amber warning row — with statute reference and the GOV.UK link — for anything missing. One click sends a single email to the tenant with every PDF attached, while the audit log writes one structured row per attachment so the tribunal-grade export shows each CP12, EICR and EPC as its own entry.

The same logic feeds the compliance score for every property: if the move-in pack is incomplete, the property cannot reach 100 / 100 — the score is the daily reminder that something is missing.

Where to go next

Start free, no card needed to ship the entire move-in pack to your next tenant in one click — with one structured audit row per attachment, ready for the day a tribunal asks for the receipt.