Letting Agent Compliance Checklist UK 2026

Why agents need their own compliance checklist

Whether you fully manage or run let-only with compliance add-ons, your agency's name sits next to the gas, electrical, EPC and deposit paperwork, and that's the name tenants and councils see. This checklist is written for typical private lets in England. It's not legal advice, so check your retainer, your redress scheme's rules and any local licensing with your own compliance lead or solicitor.

Start from the same list as the landlord compliance checklist 2026, then add what only an agency has: client money kept separate, a dated record of who did what, and clean handovers between branches. If you want the dates in software rather than spreadsheets, compare features and pricing. LetCompliance is built for agencies as well as private landlords.

Retainer: who books gas, who holds the PDF?

Your terms of business should state explicitly:

• Who instructs the Gas Safe engineer and who pays
• Who uploads the CP12 and emails the tenant within 28 days
• Who chases EICR every five years and stores remediation evidence
• Who protects the deposit and serves Prescribed Information within 30 days
• Who performs Right to Rent and retains copies

If the landlord remains liable in law but you promise a fully managed service, operational failure still hits reviews and Redress cases. Export the compliance emails when a landlord leaves, before anyone loses access to the portal.

Branch-level checklist, every new instruction

• [ ] Property record created with correct UPRN / address and landlord Ltd name if applicable
• [ ] Gas Safety due date and last CP12 on file (or void check booked)
• [ ] EICR status and next due from last report (not “we think it is fine”)
• [ ] EPC rating, expiry, and MEES E minimum satisfied for marketing
• [ ] Written statement of terms issued before the tenancy is entered into (replaced How to Rent, withdrawn 1 May 2026)
• [ ] Deposit scheme choice and 30-day diary when money clears
• [ ] Right to Rent List A/B or online check before keys
• [ ] Smoke / CO alarm position photo at check-in where you manage check-ins

Cross-link: Gas Safety certificate rules UK · EICR requirements UK.

Monthly compliance rhythm for negotiators

Week 1: renewals list, gas in next 60 days, EICR in next 120 days

Week 2: deposit PI audit, any new tenancies missing scheme emails

Week 3: Right to Rent follow-ups for time-limited tenants

Week 4: landlord statements, red / amber compliance scores per property (manual or software)

Agencies that only react to tenant complaints discover gas lapses after the certificate has already expired.

Client reporting without drowning in email

Minimum viable pack for a landlord meeting:

If you'd rather produce that pack from one screen than from spreadsheets, see features: each managed property gets a 0 to 100 compliance score with its certificate dates, and landlord statements come from the same rent records. Paid plans come with a 14-day trial; see UK pricing.

Renters’ Rights Act 2025, 1 May 2026

Section 21 no-fault possession was abolished on 1 May 2026, and the last window for using an earlier notice closed on 31 July 2026. Rebuild playbooks around Section 8 and evidence. Compliance with G-E-E-D-R (gas, electrics, EPC, deposit, Right to Rent) remains central to credibility and civil penalties. Read Section 21 abolished and Renters’ Rights Act checklist.

Redress, CMP, and professional indemnity

Propertymark, PRS and Safeagent members must meet specific client money protection (CMP) and redress rules. Your compliance files are your defence when a tenant alleges a missed gas check or a deposit error. A checklist is a starting point, not the whole story.

LetCompliance for agencies

LetCompliance runs the letting side and the compliance side of each instruction together. Shareable adverts, online applications and viewings fill the property; referencing and an e-signed periodic tenancy agreement get the tenant in; rent is collected by Direct Debit. Every managed property gets a 0 to 100 compliance score with email and SMS reminders at 90, 30, 14, 7 and 1 days, and the agency and its branches work in workspaces. Client money reconciliation and landlord statements come from the same rent records. It doesn't replace your solicitor. It takes away the date blind spots.

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Further reading: letting agent vs self-manage · HMO compliance

The agency-only duties: CMP, redress and money laundering

Everything above applies to the property. These three apply to you, and two of them are the ones that close agencies.

Client Money Protection. If you hold client money you must belong to a government-approved CMP scheme, hold client money in a separate client account, and display your certificate both in the office and on your website. The display requirement isn't decorative. It's the part trading standards can check in thirty seconds without contacting you, which makes it a common opening move in an investigation.

Redress. Membership of a government-approved redress scheme is mandatory. Being unregistered is straightforwardly enforceable, and complaints reach the scheme whether or not you joined.

Money laundering: the one agents miss. Letting agency businesses have been within the Money Laundering Regulations since 10 January 2020 where the monthly rent is €10,000 or more. If any part of your portfolio is prime or corporate, you need to be registered with HMRC for anti-money laundering supervision, with customer due diligence and a nominated officer. Agencies discover this during an inspection rather than before one, and the penalties are not small.

Add professional indemnity cover sized to your instruction book, and review it when you take on block management or anything advisory, because that is where claims come from.

The Tenant Fees Act is still your largest routine exposure

Possession law changed dramatically in 2026. The fee ban did not, and it remains the duty an agency is most likely to breach by accident, because it is breached at the counter rather than in a document.

Permitted payments are a closed list: rent, a deposit capped at five weeks' rent (six where the annual rent is £50,000 or more), a holding deposit capped at one week's rent, payments on variation or assignment at the tenant's request capped at £50 unless higher costs are evidenced, early termination costs not exceeding the landlord's loss, and utilities, communications, TV licence and council tax where the agreement provides for them.

Everything else is prohibited. Charging for referencing, inventories, check-out, admin, renewals, credit checks or "professional cleaning" as a condition is a prohibited payment, however it is labelled and however clearly it was disclosed in advance.

The penalties escalate quickly. A first breach carries a financial penalty of up to £5,000. A further breach within five years is a criminal offence, or a civil penalty of up to £30,000, and a conviction feeds directly into your banning-order and rogue-agent exposure.

Two practical controls. Audit the actual invoices your branches raise, not the fee schedule you published, because the gap between the two is where breaches live. And handle holding deposits properly: repay or apply them within the statutory timescales, and record the reason in writing on the rare occasions you may retain one.

What the Act changed for agencies specifically

The landlord-facing summary is well covered. Three points land on the agency rather than the client, and they are the ones to brief negotiators on.

You are advertising under new rules. A stated rent must appear in the listing and offers above it cannot be invited or accepted, even where an applicant volunteers one. Blanket bans on applicants who receive benefits or have children are unlawful, in the advert and in the decision behind it, and that includes the softer phrasings. This makes your listing template and your negotiator scripts a compliance surface, not a marketing one.

Possession work got more technical. Section 21 is gone, so every possession runs through a Section 8 ground on Form 3A with the right notice period and particulars, and rent increases through an annual Section 13 notice on Form 4A that the tenant can refer to the tribunal, which cannot set a rent above the landlord's proposed figure. If serving notices is part of your service, the cost of getting one wrong rose, and defective notices are exactly what landlords complain to redress schemes about.

The information duty changed shape. The How to Rent guide was withdrawn on 1 May 2026. New tenancies require a written statement of terms given before the tenancy is entered into; tenants already in place on that date had a separate one-off information sheet duty. Any check-in pack still containing How to Rent needs updating, and any process document that calls it statutory needs correcting.

For agencies: LetCompliance runs the operation rather than bolting compliance onto a CRM. That means client money reconciliation with a statement for each landlord, per-branch workspaces, and Section 8 (Form 3A) and Section 13 (Form 4A) notices built on the current forms. See the letting agent overview.