Right to Rent fines on landlords: £3.4 million in 2024, more than twenty times the year before

Since 2016 a landlord in England has had to check that every adult tenant has the right to rent before the tenancy starts. If the Home Office finds a breach, it can issue a civil penalty. On 13 February 2024 those penalties went up, in the Home Office’s own words, from £80 per lodger and £1,000 per occupier for a first breach to £5,000 and £10,000, and for repeat breaches to £10,000 per lodger and £20,000 per occupier.

The Home Office publishes how many penalties it issues, and what they are worth, every quarter. Read on 6 October 2026, from the release of 27 August 2026:

• In 2024 the Home Office issued 366 Right to Rent penalties worth £3,421,800, against 155 worth £151,480 in 2023: more than twenty times the value.
• 2024 was the year with the most penalties since the scheme began. The value of penalties in 2024 alone was nearly six times the £590,160 issued in the eight years from 2016 to 2023 put together.
• In 2025: 254 penalties worth £2,795,000. In the first half of 2026: 108 worth £1,285,000.
• The average penalty rose from £977 in 2023 to £11,004 in 2025 and £11,898 in the first half of 2026.
• Of the £8.09 million of penalties issued since 2016, 91% was issued from April 2024 onwards.

Year by year

No penalties were issued from April to December 2020. The number of penalties had already started rising in the second half of 2023, before the new amounts; what changed in 2024 was the size of each one.

Quarter by quarter since 2023

The values are what the Home Office issued. They can come down after an objection or appeal, or under the faster payment option, so the amount actually paid may be lower. One penalty can cover more than one tenant.

What it means for a landlord

The penalty is per lodger or per occupier, so one let to a household without a valid check can mean several. The check has to be made before the tenancy starts, on every adult who will live there as their only or main home, whether or not they are named on the tenancy agreement. Where someone has a time-limited right to rent, a follow-up check is due before it runs out.

The Home Office’s revised code of practice for landlords came into force on 1 October 2026. The documents that count, digital checks through a registered provider, the 28-day rule and follow-ups are set out in Right to Rent checks from 1 October 2026, with a free Right to Rent check walk-through for a single tenant.

LetCompliance records the Right to Rent check on each tenant, counts it in the property’s compliance score, and flags the copies for deletion one year after the tenancy ends, as the code requires.

Where these figures come from

Source: Home Office, Immigration Enforcement transparency data: Q2 2026, published 27 August 2026, table CP_03, “Volume and value of right to rent civil penalties”, read on 6 October 2026. The penalty amounts quoted above are from the notes to that table.

The annual totals, the averages per penalty, the total since 2016 and the shares are LetCompliance’s sums and divisions of the Home Office’s quarterly figures. The Home Office notes that values are the gross value of penalties issued, subject to adjustment after objections or appeals, and that a single penalty can cover several tenants. The figures are national; the Home Office does not publish them by area.