The move-in pack, served in one email

Yes. Service by email with the PDF attached is widely accepted in England, provided the tenancy agreement allows electronic notice. Keep a timestamped copy in your audit log. A link to a folder is not service; the file itself must reach the tenant’s inbox.

Deposit compliance, and registration on the PRS Database once your region’s registration deadline has passed. From 1 May 2026 the court cannot make a Section 8 possession order while the deposit is unprotected, the scheme’s requirements are unmet or the Prescribed Information has not been given, on every ground except 7A and 14 (anti-social behaviour). Protecting it and giving the Prescribed Information, even late, lifts the bar, and so does returning the deposit. A missing CP12, EICR or EPC does NOT bar a Section 8 claim: those carry their own penalties (an unlimited fine and up to 2 years in prison for gas, up to £40,000 for electrical safety) and they weigh on the reasonableness test the court applies to discretionary grounds, but they are not a statutory bar. The How to Rent guide never barred Section 8 at all: it was a Section 21 precondition, and both Section 21 and the guide itself are gone.

Yes. Every possession claim now runs through Section 8, and since 1 May 2026 an unprotected deposit or missing Prescribed Information stops the court making an order on every ground except 7A and 14. Gas, electrical and energy documents carry their own penalties. A dated record of what you served is how you show each duty was met.

You serve any renewed Gas Safety, EICR or EPC certificate within 28 days of issue. You do not re-serve unchanged documents. There is no longer a How to Rent guide to re-serve: GOV.UK withdrew it on 1 May 2026, and it is retained only for a Section 21 notice served before that date.

It is not a statutory document, but it is the most useful non-statutory thing you can send. A tenant’s first week goes on working out who supplies the electricity, whether the water is metered and which council takes the council tax, and a tenant who cannot find out does not go without electricity: they stay on the supplier’s deemed contract, which is the worst rate on offer. Council tax is the one most often missed, because it is usually due from the first day of the tenancy. In LetCompliance you record the suppliers once against the property, and they go out with the move-in pack and appear in the tenant portal, with the supplier and who pays each bill. Your own account numbers and private notes are never shown to the tenant: what they need is the supplier’s name so they can open an account of their own.

On the property page, the move-in pack sender pre-ticks every uploaded statutory document, shows a warning for anything not uploaded yet, and emails the documents to the tenant with one structured audit row per attachment.