Tenancy · E-signing
Generate the correct tenancy agreement, send it, and have it signed on a phone the same evening — sealed with an audit certificate recording who signed, when, from where, on what, and in what order. That certificate is the part that matters, and the law says why.
Quick answer
Section 7 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 makes an electronic signature, and the certification of that signature, admissible in evidence on any question about whether a document is authentic or has been altered. The Law Commission confirmed in 2019 that an electronic signature is capable in law of executing a document, provided the signer intends to authenticate it and any other formalities are met. For an ordinary residential tenancy there are no other formalities: no witness, no wet ink, no printer. The one exception is a deed, which still needs a witness physically present — and since 1 May 2026 an assured tenancy is periodic and is not granted by deed, so it almost never touches renting.
Most tools will tell you they produce “an audit trail” and leave it there. A trail that does not say what it contains is not evidence of anything, so here is ours, field by field.
Who
Each signer, named, with the email the invitation went to.
When
A timestamp per signature, and the order the parties signed in.
From where
The IP address and the device used for each signing session.
And sealed
The document is sealed on completion, so a later change is detectable.
Why those fields and not others: a signature on its own proves almost nothing in a dispute. The question actually asked is whether this person signed this version of this document. Section 7 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 makes the certification of a signature admissible for precisely that question — so the certificate is not decoration around the signature, it is the part you would put in front of an adjudicator.
Generate the right agreement
Built for the law as it stands now — a periodic assured tenancy, not a fixed-term AST retired on 1 May 2026.
Send it to everyone who signs
Tenants, joint tenants and guarantors each get their own link. No printer, no post, no scanning it back in.
They sign on a phone
Usually the same evening. The version they sign is the version you sent, and everyone gets a copy.
It seals, and stays put
The signed PDF and its certificate attach to the tenancy, next to the certificates, rent history and move-in pack.
A deed must be signed in the physical presence of a witness who attests the signature — and the Law Commission was clear that this holds even when everyone involved is signing electronically. No e-signature platform can wish that away, including ours.
For renting, this is mostly academic. Since 1 May 2026 an assured tenancy is periodic, so it is not granted by deed and the tenancy workflow never meets the rule. It matters if you are granting a long lease — a different job, and one to take advice on rather than assume.
You can buy a standalone e-signature tool and pay per envelope. It will sign a document you had to draft somewhere else, and file it somewhere else again. The signature is not the hard part of letting a property — being able to produce the right document, correctly signed, months later, is.
Prefer to watch?
A quick, sped-up screen tour of the whole let, end to end. No sign-up, no sales call. Just press play.
Yes, for a normal residential tenancy. Section 7 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 makes an electronic signature — and the certification of that signature — admissible in evidence in legal proceedings on any question about whether a document is authentic or has been tampered with. The Law Commission confirmed in its 2019 report on the electronic execution of documents that an electronic signature is capable in law of being used to execute a document, provided the person signing intends to authenticate it and any other required formalities are met. Nothing about renting a home falls outside that.
It is the record of how the signature happened, kept alongside the signature itself. Ours records who signed, when, from which IP address and on which device, and in what order the parties signed. It matters because a signature on its own proves very little in a dispute: the question a court or a deposit adjudicator actually asks is whether this person signed this version of this document. Section 7 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 makes the certification admissible for exactly that question, which is why the certificate is the point rather than a nicety.
Yes, and most are. There is no requirement for a wet signature, a printer or a witness on an ordinary assured tenancy. The tenant opens a link, reads the agreement, signs on the screen and gets the signed copy. That is a real advantage: the agreement gets signed the same evening rather than sitting in a pile waiting for someone to find a printer, and the version everyone signed is the version you sent.
Yes — a deed. The Law Commission was explicit that a deed must still be signed in the physical presence of a witness who attests the signature, and that this remains the case even where the person executing the deed and the witness are both signing electronically. In renting this rarely arises: since 1 May 2026 an assured tenancy is periodic and is not granted by deed. It bites on long leases, so if you are granting one, take advice rather than assuming the tenancy workflow covers it.
This is what the certificate is for. You can show the signing session: the address it came from, the device, the timestamp, the order of signatures, and the sealed document as it stood when the last party signed. Because the file is sealed on completion, a later alteration is detectable rather than arguable. That turns "I never signed that" from your word against theirs into a record you can produce.
Yes. The signed PDF and its certificate stay attached to the tenancy in your account, alongside the certificates, the move-in pack and the rent history. The moment you need them — a deposit dispute, a Section 8 claim, an insurer, an accountant — is never the moment you want to be searching an old inbox.
No. E-signing is part of the plan rather than a per-envelope charge, and it is the same signing engine used across the product — tenancy agreements, inventories and condition reports all seal the same way. There is no separate e-signature subscription to buy alongside.
The workflow is built around generating the correct agreement for the current law and then signing it, because that pairing is where the value is: an agreement drafted for the pre-May-2026 regime is a problem an e-signature only makes faster. If you have your own document you want signed, tell us what you need — it is a fair ask and worth hearing.
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LetCompliance seals every signed document with an audit certificate.
This page is marketing content, not legal advice. Statutory references were checked against legislation.gov.uk in July 2026.