You cannot refuse a tenant for having children or claiming benefits

No. Since 1 May 2026 it has been unlawful in England to refuse someone a home because they have children or because they claim benefits — and the prohibition is wider than refusing. You may not stop them asking whether the property is available, seeing information about it, or viewing it. A council can impose a penalty of up to £7,000 for each breach, on the balance of probabilities rather than the criminal standard.

The same chapter of the Renters' Rights Act closed rental bidding on the same day. You must publish an asking rent, and you may not invite or accept a penny above it.

Almost nobody reading this is going to write "no DSS" in an advert. That is not how landlords get caught by these rules, and the rest of this post is about how they do.

What the law actually prohibits

Chapter 3 of Part 1 of the Act contains two near-identical sections — section 33 for children, section 34 for benefits. Each says a landlord, or anyone acting on their behalf, must not do either of two things on that basis:

1. Prevent a person from enquiring whether the dwelling is available, accessing information about it, viewing it in order to consider renting it, or entering into a tenancy of it.
2. Apply a provision, criterion or practice in order to make such people less likely to enter into a tenancy than people who are not.

The first limb is the one everybody expects. The second is the one that catches people, because it catches a rule rather than a refusal — you can be in breach of it without ever turning anybody down, or ever discussing children or benefits with anyone.

It is worth reading the second limb closely, because it is narrower than it is often reported to be. The statute says a provision, criterion or practice applied "in order to" make these tenants less likely to get the tenancy. That is purposive wording: this is not a pure effects test, and a rule that happens to bear unevenly is not automatically caught. What makes the distinction thinner than it sounds is that a criterion counting a salary and ignoring universal credit has no other function to point at — and GOV.UK's own worked example, further down, is precisely that. A local housing authority decides it on the balance of probabilities, from what your criteria look like.

"Benefits claimant" is defined in section 42 and is broad — it reaches entitlement to payments under the social security legislation, including payments made directly to a landlord, and council tax reduction. It is not a synonym for out of work.

Two things narrow the scope slightly and are worth knowing. The prohibition binds a "relevant person" — the prospective landlord and anyone acting for them, so your letting agent's practice is your problem. But conduct is not a breach if it consists *only* of publishing advertisements or providing a means for landlord and tenant to contact each other directly. That exempts the portal your advert sits on. It does not exempt you, and it does not exempt an agent who does anything else at all in relation to the property.

The exceptions are narrower than they sound

Insurance. If your policy requires you to prohibit children or benefit claimants, you may act on it — but only if the contract "started before 1 May 2026 and has not been renewed since then", in GOV.UK's words. Section 38 voids that kind of term in any policy entered into or extended on or after that date. Landlord insurance is generally annual, so for most landlords this exception has already expired or is about to. Check the date on your policy rather than your memory of it.

A superior lease or a mortgage. Sections 36 and 37 do the same job: a term in a head lease or a mortgage condition purporting to require you to exclude children or benefit claimants is of no effect. "My freeholder won't allow it" stopped being an answer on 1 May 2026.

A proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. This exists for children and does not exist for benefits — section 34 has only the insurance exception. Where it does apply, GOV.UK says you must be able to show both *why* the restriction is necessary and *why it applies to this tenant*: you "cannot refuse all children because of a staircase that could be used safely by an older child". Genuine overcrowding, a licence condition, or a shared house let to unrelated adults can qualify. A blanket age limit with no reasoning attached cannot.

Discriminatory terms in the tenancy itself are void under section 35, whether or not anybody relies on them.

What you may still do — and the rule that trips people

Section 41 is one sentence, and it is the most reassuring sentence in the chapter:

Nothing in this Chapter prohibits taking a person's income into account when considering whether that person would be able to afford to pay rent under a relevant tenancy.

You may still assess affordability. You may still ask for proof of income, take references, run a credit check, and ask for a guarantor where the figures do not work without one. None of that is touched.

The catch is in how you count. GOV.UK's guidance for landlords is explicit that when you assess affordability you "must include income from benefits in the same way as other income". An affordability rule that counts a salary and ignores universal credit or housing benefit is the shape of thing limb 2 describes, and the hardest kind to explain as anything else — GOV.UK's own worked example is a referencing company that disregarded benefit income and produced a rejection, which the council treated as discrimination. You instructed the referencing company. It acted on your behalf.

So the practical test for your own process is not "would I turn away someone on benefits". It is: does my income rule produce a different answer depending on where the money comes from? If a rent-to-income multiple is applied to earnings only, it does. If a "must be employed" filter sits anywhere in your criteria, it does.

Rental bidding, and the asking rent

Chapter 6 commenced the same day. Section 56 requires that when you advertise or offer a property in writing you state a specific amount of rent, and then prohibits two things: inviting or encouraging anyone to offer more than the stated rent, and accepting such an offer if one arrives unprompted. Both halves matter — declining to solicit a bid is not enough if you take one.

It binds your agent as well as you. A "to let" board outside the property is not a written advert, so it does not need a figure on it. The penalty under section 57 is the same £7,000, imposed by the local housing authority on the balance of probabilities.

Nothing stops you accepting *less* than the advertised rent, and nothing stops you advertising at a figure you have thought properly about in the first place — which is the actual change in behaviour this asks for.

The workaround that is also closed

The obvious substitute for a higher bid is a larger up-front payment, and that route is shut too. GOV.UK's guidance on rent in advance is that you must not accept, ask for, or encourage any rent before both parties have signed, and after signing you may require at most one month's rent, or 28 days' where rent is not paid monthly.

The deposit caps are unchanged and are not a lever either: a holding deposit of up to one week's rent, and a tenancy deposit of five weeks — six where annual rent is £50,000 or more. Six months up front from a tenant who wants to reassure you is not available, however willingly it is offered, and "they offered" is not a defence.

How this actually goes wrong

Not with a "no DSS" advert. With four quieter things.

A standing advert nobody rewrote. The template you have reused for six years, with "professionals only" or "working tenants preferred" in it, is a provision, criterion or practice in plain sight, and it is the easiest possible thing for a council to evidence because it is published.

A rent-to-income multiple applied to salary. Thirty times the monthly rent in annual *earnings* is a rule a lot of people use without ever writing it down. Applied to a household whose income is partly benefits, it produces a rejection that has nothing to do with whether they can pay.

An agent, or a referencing provider, applying its own criteria. Both act on your behalf. Their filter is your breach, and you will discover what their filter actually was at the point somebody complains about it.

"I'll keep your details and let you know." Said to the applicant with two children and not to the one without, it is preventing access to information about the dwelling, and it leaves no record of why.

Each is £7,000, decided on the balance of probabilities, by a council that will ask you what your criteria were and when you applied them. The honest answer for most landlords is that the criteria lived in their head and moved around. That is not a defence; it is the thing being complained about.

And the exposure runs in both directions now. Since 1 May 2026 there is no route out of a tenancy that does not require a statutory ground, so the cost of getting selection wrong is high — while the cost of getting *how you select* wrong is a penalty. The only way to be safe on both counts is the same way: a process you apply identically and can show afterwards.

Where Tenarize fits

Tenarize is software for private landlords in England who manage their own properties. It is worth being exact about what it does here, because this is an area where a product could easily be sold as something it is not.

Tenarize does not check your advert, does not decide affordability, and cannot tell you whether a refusal was lawful. It has no view on your criteria. What it does is make the process repeatable and dated, which is the part you cannot reconstruct afterwards.

The vetting checklist is the first of five tenancy stages and cannot be skipped: Right to Rent, proof of identity, proof of income or employment, a credit check, a previous landlord reference, and guarantor details where applicable. The same six, in the same order, for everyone — which is the shape of a process that does not produce a different answer for different applicants. There is no field anywhere in it for household composition, and nothing asks what a tenant's income is for.

Each item takes an optional document upload, so the payslip, the award letter or the reference sits against the tenancy rather than in an inbox. Everything logged comes out as a dated audit trail — a PDF running from the day you took the tenancy on. If a council asks what you assessed and when, that is the answer, and it exists whether or not you expected to need it.

The deposit cap is enforced rather than suggested — five weeks, or six above £50,000 a year — so the figure cannot quietly drift above it while you are thinking about something else.

What none of that does is decide anything for you. Counting benefit income the same way as any other income is a judgement you make; the product records that you made it.

What actually changes

You stop holding your letting criteria in your head. They become six checks that happen in the same order for every applicant, which is both the better way to choose a tenant and the only version of it you can evidence a year later.

The awkward category disappears too. There is no moment where you have to decide how to word a decline, because there is no decision being made on a basis you would rather not write down — and a process you would be content to show a council is, not coincidentally, a process that finds you better tenants.

Where to check this yourself

• Rental discrimination: a guide for landlords — GOV.UK, including the worked examples and the pages on children and on benefits
• Renters' Rights Act 2025, Part 1 Chapter 3 — sections 33 to 42, the prohibitions, the exceptions, the £7,000 penalty and the definition of a benefits claimant
• Rental bidding — GOV.UK, and section 56 itself
• Rent in advance and deposits — GOV.UK, including the holding deposit and deposit caps
• Renters' Rights Act: an overview for landlords — GOV.UK's summary of everything that changed on 1 May 2026
• Renting out a property — GOV.UK's overview of a landlord's duties in England
• Shelter and Citizens Advice — free, independent advice on a specific situation

Everything above was read at source on 20 September 2026, and the second limb of sections 33 and 34 was re-read and this post corrected on 21 September: the statute says a criterion applied "in order to" make these tenants less likely to get the tenancy, and the first version of this post described that as needing no purpose at all. If you have had a complaint made about you, that is a question for advice rather than a blog post.

The companion to this one is the six checks to run before you hand over the keys, which is the process side of the same decision. Tenarize is £15 a month for one to five properties, and the first month is free. The help centre is free to read either way.