Rent challenges at the tribunal nearly tripled after the Renters’ Rights Act: 1,028 decisions counted

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026. From that day, in GOV.UK’s words to landlords, rent goes up through “the section 13 process”, no more than once a year, and tenants can challenge a proposed increase that is above the open market rent. A challenge goes to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), and every decision it makes on a market rent is published on GOV.UK.

Those decisions were counted on 6 October 2026: all 1,028 market rent decisions made from 1 January 2025, read one by one. The short version:

• The tribunal decided 358 rent challenges in May to July 2026, against 133 in the same three months of 2025: nearly three times as many.
• In January to April 2026 it decided about 33 a month. In June and July it decided 134 and 132.
• Most of these cases began before the Act. Of the decisions since 1 May where the date of the landlord’s notice could be read, 273 of 276 started with a notice served before 1 May 2026, and 234 of those in January to April 2026.
• The tribunal set a lower rent than the landlord proposed in 69% of decisions since 1 May (189 of 273 with readable figures), the same rent in 24% and a higher rent in 7%.
• Landlords proposed a median increase of 15.2% (£152 a month). The rents set were a median 8.7% (£100 a month) above the old rent.
• London went from 25 decisions in May to July 2025 to 115 in May to July 2026.

Month by month

Market rent decisions by the month they were made:

The tribunal publishes decisions some weeks after it makes them, so August and September 2026 are not complete yet and will rise. The jump from May to July is not a publishing effect: the same months of 2025 were steady at around 40, and late publication can only add to the 2026 figures.

By tribunal region

The tribunal sits in five regions. Decisions in May to July:

London rose more than fourfold and the Midlands fivefold, from a small base. Every region at least doubled except the Southern region, which rose by 83%.

What the tribunal decided

Where the landlord’s proposed rent and the rent the tribunal set could both be read from the decision:

And where the old rent could be read too:

Where the tribunal cut the rent, the median cut since 1 May was 7.3% below the landlord’s figure, £100 a month. In 11 of the 271 decisions it set a rent below the old rent. Landlords asked for smaller increases in the cases decided since 1 May than in those decided before, and the tribunal still trimmed most of them.

Of the 18 decisions since 1 May where the rent set was higher than the landlord proposed, 15 began with a notice served before 1 May 2026. The notice date could not be read for the other three.

By region, since 1 May 2026

London landlords asked for the largest increases, and the tribunal set the largest too. In the Southern region the median increase set was less than half the median asked for (6.4% against 13.3%).

The notices behind the rise

For the decisions made since 1 May 2026, the landlord’s notice was served in these months (where the date could be read):

So the rise came from rent increases served in the four months before the Act came into force, not from notices served under it. Cases on notices served from 1 May are only starting to reach decisions, and the figures for the rest of 2026 will show how often tenants challenge increases made under the new rules.

What happens next

On 9 September 2026 the government said that HMRC’s Valuation Office will become responsible for decisions on challenges to rent increases in England, with the aim of resolving disputes faster and reducing pressure on the tribunal. Until that service exists, GOV.UK says, a renter who wants to challenge a rent increase must still apply to the First-tier Tribunal, and does not have to pay the higher rent until the tribunal has made its final decision.

For landlords, the decisions point one way: if a tenant challenges, the rent on the notice is measured against the open market rent, and in about seven of ten challenges the tribunal set a lower figure. In 319 of the 365 decisions since 1 May that came with written reasons, the tribunal refers to comparable lettings: evidence of what similar homes nearby let for. The steps are in how to serve a Section 13 notice and what happens at a rent tribunal challenge.

LetCompliance fills in Form 4A from the tenancy’s own records on paid plans and works out the earliest date a new rent can start (two months’ notice, and 52 weeks since the last increase). The rent figure itself is the landlord’s to set and evidence.

How these figures were made

Source: HM Courts and Tribunals Service, Residential property tribunal decisions on GOV.UK, category “Rents - Market rent (assured shorthold tenancy)”, read on 6 October 2026. That category listed 1,353 decisions made from 1 January 2025 to 6 October 2026. The 1,028 with a market rent case reference (“MNR”, a determination under sections 13 and 14 of the Housing Act 1988) were counted; fair rent cases and other case types filed in the same category were left out.

Monthly counts use the date of the decision. The proposed rent, the old rent, the rent set and the date of the landlord’s notice were read from each decision’s published documents by a script. Weekly rents were converted to monthly (× 52 ÷ 12) and quarterly rents divided by three. Two decisions gave a notice date later than the decision itself, an evident typing error, and were left out of the notice dates. Where a figure could not be read reliably, or the rent units were unclear, the decision was left out of that figure rather than estimated, which is why each table gives the number of readable decisions. Decisions that were struck out, withdrawn or outside the tribunal’s jurisdiction (24 since 1 May) are counted in the monthly figures but not in the outcomes. A random sample was checked by hand against the decisions.

Regions are the tribunal regions in the case reference (London; Southern, references beginning CHI or HAV; Eastern, CAM; Midlands, BIR; Northern, MAN). The tribunal also decides market rents for housing association assured tenancies, and the published decisions do not always say which kind of landlord is involved, so these are all market rent decisions, not only private landlords’. Medians are used because a few very large increases would distort an average. No names of tenants or landlords were recorded.