Rent increases: how often, how much notice, and the section 13 notice

You can increase the rent on an assured periodic tenancy in England once a year, by serving your tenant form 4A at least two months before the new rent starts — and not at all during the first year of the tenancy. That process, known as section 13, is the route for every increase since 1 May 2026. Agreeing a figure with your tenant over the phone does not replace it, and neither does a rent review clause in the agreement.

How often can you increase the rent?

Once a year. There is no route to a second increase inside the same twelve months, however small the first one was, and however willing the tenant.

There is also a standing start. You cannot increase the rent during the first year of the tenancy at all, so the earliest a new figure can take effect is a year in. Since tenancies have been assured periodic from the outset — no fixed term, no end date — that first year is measured from when the tenancy began rather than from any renewal point, because there is no longer a renewal point to measure from.

The practical consequence is that the rent you agree at the start is the rent for a longer stretch than it used to be, and getting it wrong at the beginning is harder to correct quickly than it was.

What notice do you have to give?

At least two months, in writing, on the prescribed form. For a privately rented property that form is form 4A — landlord's notice proposing a new rent, published on GOV.UK alongside the other assured tenancy forms.

Two months is a minimum rather than a target. Nothing stops you giving more, and on a tenancy where the tenant's own budgeting is tight, more is usually the better call — a tenant who has had three months to plan for an increase is a tenant less likely to fall into arrears over it.

The form has to be completed properly and served properly. A notice with the wrong dates on it, or one that proposes a start date less than two months out, is not a smaller version of a valid notice; it is one that does not do the job, and the increase does not take effect.

Does a rent review clause still work?

No, and this is the change that catches out landlords who wrote their own agreement years ago.

GOV.UK is direct about it: you need to follow the section 13 process every time you increase the rent, even if you have already agreed the increase with your tenant. A clause in the agreement saying the rent rises by a set percentage each April does not survive that. Neither does a handshake.

There is also a transitional trap worth knowing if you have an older tenancy on the books. Where an increase was agreed before 1 May 2026 using a rent review clause but was due to take effect after that date, GOV.UK's guidance says the increase will not apply. If you have been collecting a figure that arrived by that route, it is worth checking what your tenant is actually contractually paying.

What happens if the tenant challenges it?

A tenant who thinks the proposed rent is above the open market rent — what the property would let for if it were advertised today — can ask the First-tier Tribunal to decide what the new rent should be.

Three features of that process are worth understanding before you set a figure, because two of them are new and both run in the tenant's favour:

• The Tribunal cannot set the rent higher than you proposed. Under the old regime it could, which was the main reason tenants hesitated to challenge. That risk is gone, so expect challenges to be more common than they were.
• The new rent is not backdated. It applies from the date of the Tribunal's determination, rather than from the date on your notice, so a challenge that takes time to resolve is time at the old rent.
• The Tribunal can defer an increase by up to a further two months in cases of undue hardship.

None of that makes a well-judged increase risky. It does make a speculative one expensive: an over-ambitious figure that gets knocked back costs you the months it took to argue about, and you cannot try again for a year.

A tenant also cannot be evicted for challenging a rent increase. Since 1 May 2026 the only landlord-initiated route to possession is a Section 8 notice on one of the statutory grounds, each of which has to be proved — and we have written up what those grounds are and how much notice each one carries separately.

The date nobody sets for you

The awkward part of all this is not the form. It is that the anniversary is now the only moment in the year when the rent can move, and nothing in the tenancy tells you when it is.

Under fixed terms, a renewal date did that work. It was the moment the rent got reviewed, the certificates got checked and the paperwork got tidied. Periodic tenancies have no such moment, so the review date, the two months' notice before it, and the anniversary it has to sit behind are all dates you keep yourself now. Miss the window and the answer is not "serve it late" — it is "wait".

Where Tenarize helps, and where it doesn't

Plainly: Tenarize does not serve a section 13 notice for you, and it does not produce form 4A. That form comes from GOV.UK and it goes to your tenant.

What it does do is carry the change through. On an active tenancy you record the new rent and the date it starts, and that date is the point of it: rent collected before the date is the old amount, rent collected on or after it is the new one. Schedule it the day you serve the notice, two months ahead, and nothing happens until the day it should. Your tenant sees the new figure and its start date on their own tenancy page, so neither of you is relying on remembering a letter. The change, and any cancellation of one, is written to the tenancy's audit trail with both figures and the dates.

Alongside that sits the record either side would want if the figure were ever questioned: every rent charge raised and every payment collected, exportable as a per-tenancy audit trail for a dispute or a tribunal, and rent reports as PDF or CSV with UK tax-year presets. Rent itself is collected by Bacs Direct Debit as a direct charge on your own Stripe account — Tenarize takes no cut of it.

If a tenant does challenge an increase, the argument is about the open market rent rather than about your paperwork. Having the payment history to hand simply means the paperwork is not also in question.

Where to check this yourself

• Rent increases — GOV.UK, the section 13 process for a privately rented property
• Assured tenancy forms — GOV.UK, where form 4A itself lives
• The Renters' Rights Act: an overview for landlords — GOV.UK, how the rent rules sit alongside everything else that changed
• Grounds for possession — GOV.UK, for what a Section 8 notice can and cannot be used for
• Shelter and Citizens Advice — free, independent advice on a specific tenancy

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