Can a landlord refuse a pet? What the rules are in England now

You can refuse a pet, but only if you have a good reason for refusing that particular pet, and you have to say so in writing within 28 days. Since 1 May 2026 a tenant in England has a statutory right to ask to keep a pet, and a landlord must not unreasonably refuse. A blanket "no pets" line in the agreement is no longer an answer on its own — every request is judged on its own facts.

What the tenant has to do

Ask in writing, and describe the pet. GOV.UK is specific that the request should say what the animal is: the type, the size, and what space it needs. "Can I get a dog" is the start of a conversation rather than a request that starts the clock.

That description matters more than it looks, because almost every reasonable ground for refusal turns on the specific animal rather than on pets in general. A landlord cannot sensibly assess whether a property is too small for a pet without knowing which pet.

What you have to do, and by when

Respond in writing, within 28 days of the request.

If you need more information to decide — and you are allowed to ask for it — the deadline flexes, but only a little. Once your tenant has given you what you asked for, you have either the remainder of the original 28 days or an extra 7 days to give your final decision, whichever is later. So a question asked on day 25 does not buy you another month; it buys you until day 32.

Two habits make this easy rather than fraught. Answer in writing even when the answer is yes, because the consent is the thing either side may need to point at later. And ask for anything you need early, rather than at the end of the window, since the extension is measured from when the answer arrives rather than from when you asked.

There is one exception, and it is easy to miss: if you reasonably ask for more information and your tenant never provides it, section 16A says you are not required to give or refuse consent at all. The request simply stops. That is not a way out of answering — it only applies where you genuinely asked and they genuinely did not reply.

What counts as a reasonable refusal?

Only two grounds are written into the Act itself, and both concern a superior landlord: where keeping the pet would put you in breach of an agreement with one, or where that agreement requires their consent and you have taken reasonable steps to get it without success. Section 16B lists those as circumstances in which refusal is reasonable — it does not say they are the only ones.

Everything else is a judgement about your particular property and the particular animal. GOV.UK's examples share a shape: each is a fact about the property, the animal or somebody else, rather than a preference of yours.

• The property is too small for the pet, or for the number of pets asked for.
• The animal is illegal to own.
• Another occupier has allergies — which is the one that comes up most often in a shared house.

Whatever the reason, write it down. The test is whether the refusal was reasonable, so the reason itself is the evidence.

What doesn't count

The refusals that will not survive the test are the ones most landlords have relied on for years:

• You would rather not have pets in the property.
• A previous tenant's animal caused damage.
• You are worried about damage that has not happened yet.
• The agreement has always said no pets.

There is one more that is worth stating outright, because getting it wrong is a discrimination problem rather than a pets problem: where the animal is an assistance animal, such as a guide dog, refusing is unreasonable.

A tenant who believes a refusal was unreasonable can challenge it, which is another reason to give a real reason in writing rather than a flat no. A refusal you can explain is a refusal you can defend.

What if you just don't answer?

This is where a lot of what is written about pets is wrong, so it is worth being precise. Missing the deadline does not hand your tenant automatic consent. There is no provision anywhere in the Act that deems consent given when a landlord says nothing.

What silence does is put you in breach of a term the Act implies into the tenancy — and section 16B gives the court power to order specific performance where that happens. The tenant's remedy is to make you decide, not to treat the answer as yes.

That is uncomfortable in both directions. A landlord who ignores a request has not quietly refused it; they have acquired a breach. A tenant who takes silence as permission has no consent, whatever they were told.

Can you require pet insurance, or a bigger deposit?

No, to both — and this one catches people out because it was in the Bill.

The original Renters' Rights Bill would have let a landlord require a tenant to insure against pet damage, or to reimburse the landlord's cost of doing so, and treated that as a permitted payment. It was removed before the Act passed, and the words do not appear in section 16A or 16B at all.

What is left is the Tenant Fees Act 2019, which is blunt about it. Section 1(3) says a landlord must not require a tenant to enter into a contract with a third party in connection with a tenancy where that contract is a contract of insurance — the only carve-outs are utilities and communication services. Asking the tenant to reimburse your own policy instead does not help either: that is a payment, and the Act's list of permitted payments does not include one for pets.

The same Act caps the deposit at five weeks' rent, or six weeks' where the annual rent is £50,000 or more, and creates no pet exception to it. There is no larger deposit to ask for and no separate pet deposit to add, whatever the tenant is willing to pay. We have written up the deposit cap and the 30-day deadline separately, and both apply here unchanged.

One consequence is worth acting on rather than filing away. A pets clause promising you can require insurance is not merely optimistic: under section 1(6) a landlord "requires" it simply by entering into an agreement that purports to require it, so the clause is the problem whether or not anyone ever acts on it. If your agreement was drafted while the Bill was going through Parliament, that is the sentence to go and look at.

So what actually protects you?

The deposit covers it. The inventory decides whether you can reach the deposit.

Pet damage comes out of the ordinary tenancy deposit at the end of the tenancy, in exactly the way any other damage beyond fair wear and tear does — nothing about a pet changes that. What decides whether you can actually draw on it is evidence: a move-in record showing the condition of the carpets, the skirting and the garden, dated, photographed and signed by both sides, is what turns "the dog did that" from an argument into a comparison. Saying yes to a pet is a good moment to check that record exists, because it is the last easy moment before there is something to argue about.

It's already in your agreement, if the agreement is current

Any tenancy agreement written before 1 May 2026 that carries a flat prohibition on pets is describing a position that no longer holds. The statutory right sits above the contract, so the clause does not make the refusal reasonable — it just makes the agreement out of date.

In Tenarize, the pets clause is part of the generated tenancy agreement as standard. It is not one of the optional clauses you can toggle off before sending, because it is not really optional: it sets out the tenant's right to ask, the deadline for answering and the grounds on which a refusal is reasonable, and it says in terms that no insurance and no payment may be required as a condition of consent. The agreement is generated by the product and then e-signed by both parties, with a record of who signed and when.

We rewrote that clause on 10 September 2026, while writing this post. The previous version repeated the pet-insurance position from the Bill rather than the Act, and told the reader consent was deemed given after 28 days' silence — the two mistakes this post exists to correct, made in our own template. Every agreement carries the version of the wording it was sent under, which is how we can tell which ones are affected.

Worth saying plainly, as we do everywhere: that agreement is written against the regulations but it has not been reviewed by a solicitor for your specific tenancy, and it carries that statement permanently on its own first page. Tenarize is software, not a law firm.

Where to check this yourself

• If a tenant wants a pet to live with them — GOV.UK, the landlord-facing guidance this post follows
• Housing Act 1988, section 16A and section 16B — legislation.gov.uk, the law itself: the request, the 28 days, the delays, and what the court can order
• The Renters' Rights Act: an overview for landlords — GOV.UK, where pets sit among everything else that changed
• Tenant Fees Act 2019 — legislation.gov.uk, the deposit cap, the ban on required insurance, and what else may not be charged
• Deposit protection schemes and landlords — GOV.UK, for the deposit the pet damage would come out of
• Shelter and Citizens Advice — free, independent advice on a specific request

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