Landlord Laws & Legislation

Tenant Fees Act 2019: A Landlord's Guide

Reviewed by Bradley Askew, Solicitor (non-practising), England & Wales · SRA 300076

Last reviewed 15 July 2026

Reviewed by Bradley Askew, Solicitor (non-practising), England & Wales. Reviewed 15 July 2026.

The Tenant Fees Act 2019 bans every payment a landlord or letting agent can ask a tenant for except a defined list of permitted payments — rent, a capped deposit, a capped holding deposit, narrow default fees, and a few other specific items. Since 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act 2025 has tightened it further: a new rule bans taking rent before the tenancy is signed, and caps what can be required as "initial rent" once it is. Breach it and you're looking at a civil penalty of up to £5,000 for a first offence, up to £30,000 or prosecution for a repeat breach, and banning order exposure on top. This guide sets out the full permitted payments list, the holding deposit and deposit-cap rules, the new rent-in-advance restrictions, the penalty regime, and how all of this sits alongside the abolition of Section 21.

What the Act does

The Tenant Fees Act 2019 ended the practice of landlords and letting agents charging tenants fees for tenancy services. Before 1 June 2019 — when the Act took effect for new tenancies — letting agents routinely charged tenants administrative fees that could run past £500 at the start of a tenancy: reference fees, inventory fees, "renewal" fees, "moving-in" fees, exit fees. From 1 June 2020 the Act extended to all existing tenancies, closing the transitional window during which pre-existing fee clauses could still be charged.

The approach in Section 1 and Schedule 1 of the Act is a blanket ban with a short list of exceptions, rather than a list of banned fees. Anything not expressly permitted by Schedule 1 is a prohibited payment, full stop — which is why the permitted payments list below matters more than any list of banned fees could.

The Act covers assured tenancies, student accommodation, tenants in Houses in Multiple Occupation, and licences to occupy such as lodgers. It does not cover long leases, shared ownership leases, holiday lets, or properties where the annual rent is above £100,000. Social housing assured tenancies are also outside scope, though housing associations and local authorities letting privately are covered.

The full list of permitted payments

Everything else is prohibited. The only payments a landlord or letting agent can lawfully require from a tenant are:

Rent — but only once the tenancy is signed by both parties (see Rent in advance below). Charging more rent in an early period than a later one — "front-loading" — is itself a prohibited payment.
A refundable tenancy deposit — capped at five weeks' rent where annual rent is below £50,000, six weeks where it is £50,000 or more. Must be protected in an authorised scheme within 30 days.
A refundable holding deposit — capped at one week's rent, to reserve the property while referencing takes place.
A default fee for late rent — only once rent is 14 days or more overdue, capped at 3% above the Bank of England base rate, charged daily on the overdue amount, and only if the tenancy agreement provides for it.
A default fee for a lost key or security device — limited to the landlord or agent's reasonable, evidenced cost.
A fee for changing the tenancy at the tenant's request (assignment, novation, variation — e.g. adding a new joint tenant) — capped at £50, or the actual reasonable cost if higher and evidenced.
A fee for ending the tenancy early at the tenant's request — limited to the landlord's actual loss (for an assured periodic tenancy, capped at the rent that would have been due for the statutory two-month notice period the tenant should have given).
Utilities, council tax, and TV licence — where the tenancy agreement makes the tenant contractually responsible for these, at actual cost, not marked up.

That's the complete list. Reference fees, inventory fees, "professional cleaning" fees charged upfront, tenancy renewal or "admin" fees, guarantor referencing fees, and fees for any document the landlord is statutorily required to provide are all banned outright, with no route to charging them lawfully.

Holding deposits — the detailed rules

A holding deposit is a payment a prospective tenant makes to show serious intent while referencing is carried out. GOV.UK's statutory enforcement guidance sets out the mechanics:

Maximum: one week's rent — for the property, not per tenant. Three joint tenants sharing a property at £240 a week cannot each be charged £240; the cap is £240 for the tenancy as a whole.
Default deadline: 15 days. The landlord and tenant can agree a longer or shorter deadline in writing, but 15 days applies by default from the date the holding deposit is received.
Refunded if the tenancy proceeds — set off against the first month's rent or the tenancy deposit, with the tenant's consent, once the agreement is signed.
Refunded within 7 days if the landlord withdraws, if the deadline for signing passes without a tenancy being agreed, or if the landlord decides not to proceed.
Retained only in narrow, evidenced circumstances: the prospective tenant fails a right to rent check, withdraws from the application, gives false or misleading information that is material to their suitability as a tenant (a lied-about CCJ, inflated income — not a misspelled former address), or fails to sign despite the landlord taking all reasonable steps to get the agreement signed.
Written reasons required. If the landlord keeps the deposit, they must tell the tenant why in writing within 7 days of the decision or the deadline expiring — failing to do so is itself a ground for a financial penalty.
No stacking. A landlord or agent cannot take a second holding deposit for the same property from a different prospective tenant while the first one is still live.

The deposit cap

The deposit cap sits in paragraph 2 of Schedule 1:

Five weeks' rent where annual rent is below £50,000.
Six weeks' rent where annual rent is £50,000 or more.
Not covered at all where annual rent exceeds £100,000 — the Act doesn't apply to those tenancies.

Worked example. A tenancy at £1,200 a month: annual rent is £14,400, so the five-week cap applies. Weekly rent is £1,200 × 12 ÷ 52 = £276.92. Five weeks' rent is £1,384.62. A landlord charging £1,300 or £1,400 is within the cap; a landlord charging £1,500 has taken £115.38 above the statutory maximum, and the tenant can recover the excess — the cap isn't negotiable even with the tenant's written consent.

The cap applies to the tenancy as a whole, not per tenant: three joint tenants sharing a weekly rent of £240 cannot collectively be charged more than five times £240, however the landlord chooses to split it between them. Any deposit taken must be protected in a government-backed tenancy deposit scheme within 30 days. See our deposit protection guide for the wider regime, including what happens if protection is missed or late.

Rent in advance — the new rules from 1 May 2026

This is the biggest substantive change to the Tenant Fees Act since it was passed, and it catches landlords who haven't updated their onboarding process. Section 9 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 inserted a new sub-paragraph into Schedule 1 of the Tenant Fees Act: rent is a prohibited payment if it's paid before an assured tenancy is entered into.

Before the tenancy is signed: you cannot require, invite, encourage, or even accept an offer of rent from the prospective tenant — or from anyone acting for them, or a guarantor — before both landlord and tenant have signed. It doesn't matter whether the tenant offers it unprompted; accepting it is still a breach. The rule also blocks routing the payment through a third party to get round it. A local authority paying rent in advance on a tenant's behalf (for example, to discharge a homelessness duty) is exempt, because a local authority isn't a "relevant person" for these purposes.

After the tenancy is signed, before move-in: landlords can require the "initial rent" — but Section 8 of the Renters' Rights Act, which inserts a new Section 4B into the Housing Act 1988, caps this at one month's rent (28 days' rent if the rent period is shorter than a month). The initial rent period can be shorter than subsequent periods — useful if you want rent collection to land on the 1st of the month and the tenant is moving in mid-month — but it cannot be longer than one calendar month, and no clause can require more than that as a lump sum. A holding deposit already paid is set off against the initial rent.

During the tenancy: no clause can require rent to be paid earlier than the start of the rent period it covers, and rent periods themselves cannot exceed one calendar month — quarterly or termly rent clauses (a pattern some student lets used) are void for tenancies entered into on or after 1 May 2026. A tenant can still choose to pay rent early or in a lump sum voluntarily; the landlord just cannot require it or make it a condition of anything.

None of this affects tenancies already running on 1 May 2026 — the rent-in-advance rules only bite on new assured tenancies.

Default fees

The Tenant Fees (Default) (Amount) (England) Regulations 2019 prescribe what counts as a lawful default fee:

Late rent, 14+ days overdue: daily interest at up to 3% above the Bank of England base rate on the overdue amount, and only if the tenancy agreement provides for it.
Lost keys or security devices: the landlord or agent's actual, evidenced reasonable cost — not a flat penalty fee.
Breach of the tenancy by the tenant: the landlord's evidenced reasonable cost, not a punitive charge.

A tenancy clause charging default fees outside these categories, or above the prescribed maxima, is unenforceable. A blanket "three months' rent regardless of loss" early-termination clause — common before 2019 — is void; the landlord can only recover their actual, evidenced loss.

Penalties for breach

Enforcement sits with local weights and measures authorities (Trading Standards), with Bristol City Council's National Trading Standards Lettings Agency Team acting as the national Lead Enforcement Authority. The statutory guidance sets out a two-tier penalty structure:

First breach of a prohibited payment or holding deposit rule: civil penalty up to £5,000.
Repeat breach of Section 1 or Section 2 (charging a prohibited payment) within 5 years of a previous penalty: this becomes a criminal offence — civil penalty up to £30,000 as an alternative to prosecution, or prosecution in the magistrates' court with an unlimited fine. The enforcement authority chooses which route to take, not both for the same breach.
Repeat breach limited to mishandling a holding deposit (rather than charging a prohibited fee): stays a civil penalty capped at £5,000 — it is not a banning order offence in its own right.
Banning orders: a criminal conviction for a repeat prohibited-payment breach is a banning order offence under Section 14 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which can bar the landlord from letting property altogether. Two financial penalties imposed within any 12-month period also triggers an entry on the database of rogue landlords and property agents.
Recovering the money. The enforcement authority can order the prohibited payment repaid to the tenant, with statutory interest. Separately, a tenant can apply to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) under Section 15 to recover their actual loss directly — the two routes don't run concurrently for the same payment.

How this sits alongside the abolition of Section 21

Section 21 was abolished for all assured tenancies from 1 May 2026 under the Renters' Rights Act 2025. Under the old regime, a Section 21 notice couldn't be served while the landlord held a prohibited payment — that specific bar is now moot, because there's no Section 21 notice to bar.

What has carried over into the Section 8 framework is narrower and specifically tied to deposit protection, not general fee compliance: for most possession grounds — everything except the anti-social behaviour grounds 7A and 14 — the court will only make a possession order if the tenancy deposit was protected in an authorised scheme with the prescribed information served, or has since been returned. GOV.UK's landlord overview confirms this directly.

A general Tenant Fees Act breach — an unlawful "admin" fee, an over-cap deposit taken but properly protected, a mishandled holding deposit — is enforced through the civil penalty and prosecution route described above, not as a standalone bar to a Section 8 possession claim. In practice this means a landlord with a live fees breach can, in principle, still get possession on a valid ground like serious rent arrears — but they're carrying real financial exposure (up to £30,000, prosecution, or a banning order) that a clean compliance record avoids entirely. Rent Repayment Orders are also a live risk on top of Tenant Fees Act penalties: the maximum a tenant or local authority can recover through the First-tier Tribunal has increased from one to two years' rent, and the list of offences it covers has been expanded.

For pre-1-May Section 21 notices still working through the transitional provisions, see our Section 21 abolition and Section 8 guide — the accelerated possession route built around Form N5B is now legacy/transitional only and cannot be used for notices served after 30 April 2026.

Common mistakes that trigger enforcement

Taking rent before the tenancy is signed. The single most common trap under the new rules. Asking a tenant to bring the first month's rent in cash to the signing meeting, or accepting an early bank transfer "to hold the property," is a prohibited payment even if the landlord's intentions were good.

Requiring a lump sum after signing. Six months upfront for a tenant with a thin credit history, or a full term in advance for a student let, is no longer enforceable once the tenancy is signed — only one month's (or 28 days') initial rent can be required. The tenant can offer more voluntarily; the landlord cannot make it a condition.

Flat-rate cleaning fees. A landlord charging a fixed "professional cleaning" fee at the end of a tenancy, rather than deducting the evidenced cost of returning the property to its start condition, is charging a prohibited payment.

Passing on rent guarantee insurance. The landlord's own insurance is a business cost, not a chargeable tenant fee.

Retaining a holding deposit for a minor discrepancy. The grounds for keeping a holding deposit are narrow and must be material to suitability — a misspelled former address or an undisclosed but irrelevant previous address doesn't qualify, however tempting it is to keep the money.

Charging separately for inventory or check-out. Producing an inventory or conducting a check-out is the landlord's responsibility and cost, not a chargeable tenant fee.

Quarterly or termly rent clauses in new tenancies. Since 1 May 2026, no rent period in a new assured tenancy can exceed one calendar month — a legacy clause carried over from a template written before the Renters' Rights Act is void.

Related guides

Sources

This guide reflects the law as it stands on 15 July 2026. The rent-in-advance provisions are new and untested in the courts; landlords with existing lump-sum or advance-rent arrangements should review them against the current guidance on GOV.UK.

This page is general information for landlords, not legal advice on your specific circumstances. It covers the position in England as at July 2026; Wales has separate arrangements under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. If you're facing an enforcement notice, a First-tier Tribunal application, or a prosecution under the Act, get advice from a regulated solicitor before responding.

Common questions

Can I still ask a tenant to pay rent before they sign the tenancy agreement?

No. Since 1 May 2026, Section 9 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 added a new prohibited payment to the Tenant Fees Act 2019: rent paid before an assured tenancy is entered into. You cannot ask for it, hint that it would help the application, or accept it even if the prospective tenant offers it unprompted — and you cannot route it through a third party to get round the rule. The tenancy is only 'entered into' once both landlord and tenant have signed. A holding deposit (capped at one week's rent) is not caught by this rule and can still be taken pre-signature.

How much rent can I require after the tenancy is signed but before the tenant moves in?

Up to one month's rent (or 28 days' rent if the rent period is shorter than a month) — no more. This is the 'initial rent', permitted during the gap between signing and the tenancy start date under the new Section 4B of the Housing Act 1988, inserted by Section 8 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025. Any clause requiring a bigger lump sum (six months upfront, a full term in advance) is not enforceable once the tenancy has been signed — the tenant can pay more voluntarily, but you cannot require it.

Does a Tenant Fees Act breach stop me getting a Section 8 possession order?

Not automatically. Since Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026, the specific bar that used to stop a Section 21 notice while a prohibited payment was held no longer applies (Section 21 doesn't exist to bar). What has carried over — and applies to most Section 8 grounds except the anti-social behaviour grounds 7A and 14 — is a deposit protection gateway: the court will only make a possession order if the deposit was protected in an authorised scheme with the prescribed information served, or has been returned. A general Tenant Fees Act breach (an unlawful admin fee, say) is enforced separately through a civil penalty or prosecution, not as a bar to possession in its own right.

What's the maximum holding deposit for three joint tenants sharing a property at £240 a week?

£240 total — one week's rent for the property, not one week's rent per tenant. GOV.UK's enforcement guidance gives this exact example: a landlord cannot charge each of three joint tenants a separate £240 holding deposit. The cap applies to the tenancy as a whole, and the same principle applies to the five/six-week deposit cap.

What triggers a banning order under the Tenant Fees Act?

A repeat breach of the core prohibitions — Section 1 (landlord charging a prohibited payment) or Section 2 (letting agent charging a prohibited payment) — within 5 years of a previous financial penalty is a criminal offence, carrying an unlimited fine on conviction and making the landlord or agent eligible for a banning order under Section 14 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. A repeat breach limited to mishandling a holding deposit (rather than charging a prohibited fee) stays a civil matter capped at £5,000 and is not itself a banning order offence. Two financial penalties within any 12-month period also triggers entry on the database of rogue landlords and property agents.

Can a tenant get their money back if I charge a prohibited fee?

Yes, through two separate routes. The local authority (usually Trading Standards) can order you to repay the tenant as part of enforcement action, with statutory interest running from the date specified in the penalty notice. Separately, the tenant can apply to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) under Section 15 of the Act to recover the payment directly — limited to their actual loss, not additional compensation. They can't use both routes for the same payment.