The thing that makes being a landlord stressful is not the number of rules — it is not knowing which ones have a deadline attached. A deposit has 30 days. A gas certificate has a year. A tax return has a hard date in January. Miss any of them and the excuse "I didn't realise" costs money. None of it is hard once something is watching the dates for you; this is what those dates are.
General guidance — check GOV.UK for your own circumstances.
At the start of every tenancy
These are one-offs, but they are the ones with the sharpest penalties:
Get these wrong and it is not a reminder you missed — it is a penalty and, for the deposit, a blocked possession route.
Every year
The recurring safety and money jobs:
Every few years, and the long horizon
The tax dates that actually bite
Tax stops being one January panic and becomes a running job under MTD — which is only painful if the records are not already kept as you go.
The point of a calendar
None of these dates is individually hard. The danger is that there are a dozen of them, on different clocks, across every property you own — and one lapse (an expired gas cert, a deposit protected on day 31) can cost far more than a year of watching them. A landlord with two properties is tracking well over twenty separate dates.
How LetCompliance helps: it holds every one of these per property and scores each one 0–100, so instead of remembering twenty dates you look at one number — and a certificate about to expire, a deposit deadline, or a rent-review window surfaces as a prompt before it becomes a problem. The whole calendar, watched for you.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
What are the key dates and deadlines for landlords?
At the start of a tenancy: Right to Rent check before move-in, deposit protection within 30 days, and the move-in documents served. Every year: the Gas Safety check, and a rent review is limited to once every 12 months. Every 5 years: the EICR. The EPC lasts 10 years. Plus the tax dates — 31 January and 31 July for Self Assessment, and quarterly MTD updates (first due 7 August 2026) for landlords over the threshold.
How often does a landlord need a gas safety check and EICR?
A Gas Safety check (CP12) is annual where there is gas, with a copy to the tenant. An EICR (electrical safety report) must be satisfactory and renewed at least every 5 years, and given to a new tenant at the start of the tenancy. Both are easy to let slip because their clocks differ, which is exactly why tracking them per property matters.