Tenancy Agreement Template for England (Renters' Rights Act 2025)

Since 1 May 2026, the standard residential tenancy in England is the assured periodic tenancy (APT). It replaced the assured shorthold tenancy (AST), which the Renters' Rights Act 2025 abolished. An APT runs as a rolling periodic tenancy from the first day, with no fixed end date and no Section 21. This page sets out what an APT template has to contain, the post-Renters'-Rights-Act rules every agreement now has to reflect, and the template we recommend — with the paperwork you genuinely need alongside it, and the paperwork you don't.

Renters' Rights Act — 31 May 2026 deadline. If you let a property in England on a tenancy that began before 1 May 2026, and there is a written record of its terms, you must give every named tenant the Government's Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026 by 31 May 2026. It explains how the Renters' Rights Act 2025 changes their tenancy. You must serve the exact PDF published on GOV.UK — on paper, or as an email attachment — sending only a link to it does not count.

Missing the deadline carries a civil penalty of up to £7,000, rising to up to £40,000 if the failure continues after a penalty has been issued. If a pre-1 May 2026 tenancy has no written record at all, you must instead give the tenant a written statement of the tenancy terms by the same date. Where a letting agent manages the property, the agent must serve the Information Sheet too — even if the landlord already has.

Source: The Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026, GOV.UK.

Reviewing your paperwork before the deadline is also the moment to check the agreement itself is current. A pre-Renters'-Rights-Act AST template carries clauses that are now void — fixed terms, blanket pet bans, Section 21 references, six-month advance-rent clauses. The template recommended below is drafted for the post-Renters'-Rights-Act regime.

What an assured periodic tenancy agreement is

An assured periodic tenancy is an assured tenancy under the Housing Act 1988, as amended by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. It runs from one rent period to the next — usually monthly — from the first day, with no fixed end date. It is the correct form of agreement for the great majority of private residential lets in England.

The tenant has security of tenure. The tenancy ends in only three ways: the tenant gives notice, both sides agree to end it, or the landlord proves one of the statutory grounds for possession in Schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988, served by a section 8 notice and, if the tenant does not leave, pursued through the county court.

A workable template has to do four things well: identify the parties and the property without ambiguity; set the rent, the payment date and the payment method correctly; record the deposit, the protection scheme used, and the prescribed information; and set out the repair, access and conduct obligations on both sides in language that holds up if it is ever tested. In our experience the first two are where most templates are adequate and the last two are where weak ones fail — a vague repairs clause or a missing access provision is what turns into a dispute at the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).

When to use this template

Use an APT template where the tenant is an individual renting the property as their only or principal home, you do not live there yourself, and the rent falls within the assured-tenancy limits. Under Schedule 1 of the Housing Act 1988, a tenancy cannot be an assured tenancy if the annual rent is more than £100,000, or if it is £250 or less (£1,000 or less in Greater London) — check the current figures on GOV.UK before relying on them for an unusual letting, as low-rent exclusions are periodically reviewed. Nearly all ordinary private lets — flats, terraces, semis, detached houses — sit comfortably inside those limits.

Some lets need a different arrangement rather than an ordinary APT: a let where the tenant shares your own home is a licence, not a tenancy, and needs an excluded-occupier lodger agreement instead; a letting in Wales falls under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, a different regime entirely; and a let to a company, a holiday let, or a commercial letting is not an assured tenancy at all. A house in multiple occupation brings its own licensing and management duties on top of the tenancy — see our HMO guide if that applies to your property.

The post-Renters'-Rights-Act framework your agreement must reflect

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 took effect on 1 May 2026 and rewrote the residential tenancy regime in England. Any agreement created now has to reflect the following. A pre-Renters'-Rights-Act AST template reused with only the date changed will contain clauses that are void and will miss requirements that are now mandatory.

• Fixed terms are abolished. Every assured tenancy is periodic from the start. A clause committing the tenant to six or twelve months is void.
• Section 21 is abolished. The no-fault eviction route under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 is gone. Possession is available only on the Schedule 2 grounds.
• Section 8 grounds are expanded and rebalanced. They now cover rent arrears (Grounds 8, 10 and 11 — Ground 8 requires at least three months' arrears, both when the notice is served and at the hearing), the landlord or a close family member moving in (Ground 1) or selling (Ground 1A), persistent breach (Ground 12), antisocial behaviour (Ground 14), and a new mandatory ground for student HMOs (Ground 4A). Grounds 1 and 1A cannot be used in the first 12 months of a tenancy, and a landlord who takes possession under Ground 1A cannot re-market or re-let the property for 12 months afterwards.
• Bidding wars are banned. A property must be advertised at one stated rent, and the landlord or agent cannot ask for, encourage, or accept an offer above that figure.
• Advance rent is capped at one month. Once the agreement is signed, a clause requiring more than one month's rent up front (28 days for a shorter period) is void, and asking for rent before the agreement is signed at all is prohibited.
• Pet requests cannot be unreasonably refused. A blanket no-pets clause is unenforceable. The tenant applies in writing; you must respond in writing within 28 days, or consent is treated as given.
• Rent increases are standardised. A rent-review clause in the agreement no longer works. Increases run only through the section 13 process, on the prescribed Form 4A, no more than once in any 12-month period, with at least two months' notice. The First-tier Tribunal can confirm or reduce a challenged increase but cannot raise it above the figure the landlord proposed, and an increase is not backdated.
• A written statement of tenancy terms is required for tenancies granted on or after 1 May 2026, given before the tenant is committed to the tenancy. Tenants with a written pre-1 May 2026 agreement instead receive the Information Sheet (see the notice above).
• A Decent Homes Standard is coming to private lets, but not yet in force — the Government confirmed in January 2026 that it will apply to the private rented sector from 2035.
• A Private Rented Sector Database is being introduced in a later phase, expected from late 2026, and is not yet a condition of letting — check the current position before your next let.

The recommended template

For an APT for any residential property in England, the template we point landlords to is Net Lawman's Assured Periodic Tenancy Agreement: Any Type of Property. It is drafted for the post-Renters'-Rights-Act regime and kept current as the law changes. It covers the parties, the property, the rent and payment terms, the deposit and protection-scheme reference, repairs and access, the Schedule 2 grounds wording, and the written statement of terms required since 1 May 2026.

Detail
Format	Word, Apple Pages, RTF
Length	28 pages (9,153 words)
Customisation	Online questionnaire, around 15 minutes
Delivery	Instant, by email
Refund	Full refund if not suitable
Status	Current for the Renters' Rights Act 2025

Net Lawman is a third-party provider — we earn a small commission if you buy through us, at no extra cost to you.

The template is supplied as an editable document (Word, Apple Pages or RTF), with an online questionnaire that customises the agreement to your property and tenant and delivers it by email straight away. It carries a menu of tenant covenants you can keep or remove, so the agreement matches the specific letting rather than being a single all-purpose form.

It also bundles, in the same download, the supporting paperwork most lets need: a guarantor provision built into the agreement itself, a draft inventory form, a security-deposit rent receipt, and template rent-increase and possession notices. That bundling matters for the next section.

What you genuinely need alongside it — and what you don't

A lot of tenancy-template pages tell landlords to buy a separate guarantor agreement and a separate inventory. With this template you do not need to. The guarantor terms are written into the agreement — which is the right place for them, because a guarantee signed after the tenant has already moved in can be open to challenge — and a draft inventory is included in the download.

The one document most landlords still need as a genuinely separate item is the deposit prescribed-information notice. If you take a deposit, it must be protected in one of the three Government-approved schemes — the Deposit Protection Service, mydeposits or the Tenancy Deposit Scheme — within 30 days of receipt, and the prescribed information served on the tenant in the same 30-day window, under the Housing Act 2004. Miss that and you cannot later rely on a section 8 notice on the rent-arrears ground until the failure is put right. See our guide to tenancy deposits and protection for the full process.

If you already have an older agreement in place with no guarantor clause or no inventory, standalone rent-guarantee and property-inventory documents are available separately. For a new APT created from the recommended template, you do not need either — they are already included.

What to look for in a quality template

Most of the free tenancy templates in circulation are pre-Renters'-Rights-Act AST templates with the date changed. They carry clauses that are now void and miss requirements that are now mandatory. Whatever you use, check it against this list:

• Drafted under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, not retro-fitted from an AST template. It should set the tenancy as periodic from day one, with no fixed term and no Section 21 wording.
• Customisable to your property — a route that puts the right clauses in and leaves the wrong ones out.
• Includes the written statement of key tenancy terms the law now requires landlords to give.
• References the deposit scheme correctly, with placeholders for the scheme name, certificate number, and the date the prescribed information was served.
• Repair and access clauses that match the law — the implied repairing terms in section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the duty to keep the property fit for human habitation.
• No banned clauses — no fixed term, no blanket no-pets clause, no advance rent above one month, no fees prohibited by the Tenant Fees Act 2019.
• A refund or fix-it offer if the document does not suit. A provider that will not stand behind its own product is one worth avoiding.

Three mistakes that cost landlords money

Reusing an old AST template. An old AST template with the date typed over still contains a fixed term, a no-pets clause and Section 21 wording — all void or unusable now. The fix is to start from a template drafted under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, not to edit an old one.

Missing the deposit prescribed information. Take a landlord who protects a deposit in a scheme but never serves the prescribed information. Months later the tenant falls into arrears; the landlord cannot rely on a section 8 notice on the arrears ground until the prescribed-information failure is put right, and may face a penalty of one to three times the deposit under the Housing Act 2004. The fix is the 30-day prescribed-information notice, served on time, every time.

Treating the Information Sheet as optional. The 31 May 2026 Information Sheet duty (see the notice near the top of this page) is not advisory. The penalty is up to £7,000, rising to up to £40,000 if the failure continues after a penalty is issued. The fix is to serve the exact GOV.UK PDF on every existing tenant before the deadline and keep a dated record that you did.

Get the template

The recommended assured periodic tenancy agreement for any residential property in England, drafted for the post-Renters'-Rights-Act regime, one-off purchase, no subscription, full refund if it is not suitable.

Net Lawman is a third-party provider — we earn a small commission if you buy through us, at no extra cost to you.

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This page explains the paperwork and the law behind it; it is not legal advice on your individual situation. If your circumstances are unusual — an HMO, a company let, arrears already in progress, or a dispute over an existing agreement — take advice from a solicitor or a service such as Shelter or Citizens Advice before you act.

Related guides

• Renters' Rights Act 2025 — the full guide
• End of fixed-term tenancies explained
• The new Section 8 grounds in full
• Tenancy deposits and protection
• Gas safety certificates for landlords
• EPC and MEES regulations
• Section 8 Notice to Quit template
• How to serve a Section 8 notice
• Section 8 grounds for possession
• Houses in multiple occupation (HMO) rules
• Court forms index