Agents: these are your key dates for 2026

This year is shaping up to be a big one for the private rented sector, with several major tax and regulation changes falling in 2026. What does your business need to be prepared for?

Here are the top three takeaways for agents:

• Make sure your landlords know about new Making Tax Digital rules before they kick in this April.

• How agents in England can adapt their lettings business to the Renters’ Rights Act in time for May – more on that in this article.

• Thinking longer term, changes to Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) will be a challenge and an opportunity for agents this year.

April – Making Tax Digital

From 6 April (the start of the new tax year), some landlords will have to follow new Income Tax rules. Under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, they will have to register through HMRC’s online service, create and store digital records, and file quarterly updates.

For some of your landlords, this is a problem for later: only those with qualifying incomes (from self-employment and property) over £50,000 are covered. But if you work with landlords with big portfolios, or landlords who are self-employed and have rental properties, they’re likely to be affected. Alerting them now and providing them with clear rental income statements could help them meet the new requirements.

The threshold will also fall to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from 2028. Helping large-portfolio landlords navigate the system this year will be good practice for when more landlords fall under the new rules.

May – The Renters’ Rights Act lands

As we covered in a previous post, the Renters’ Rights Act started coming into force in England in December 2025, when councils were given tough new enforcement powers to enter and search agencies and rented homes.

But the first big phase of the government’s rollout plan lands on 1 May. This will cover most of the big-ticket items from the Act:

• The move to rolling tenancies and the end of Section 21 evictions

• Reforming Section 8 eviction grounds

• Limiting rent increases to once a year

• Banning rental bidding and rent in advance

• Requiring landlords to consider tenant requests to keep a pet

Late 2026

The Autumn Budget usually falls in late October or early November. We don’t yet know what will be in it, but last year’s was big news for the property sector: the Chancellor brought us a “Mansion Tax” for high-value properties and an Income Tax hike for landlords. We’ll get our first clues in the Spring Statement on 3 March, which will give us an update on public finances.

Phase 2 of the Renters’ Rights Act is also scheduled to start in late 2026. This includes a region-by-region rollout of the new private rented sector database, which all private landlords in England will have to sign up to. The government will also start developing the new private rented sector Ombudsman at this point, but it isn’t expected to be live until 2028.

Parts of the Housing (Scotland) Act are set to come into force this year too, but it’s not clear exactly when as they will require secondary legislation. The first one to be implemented may be the Investigation and Commencement of Repair (Scotland) Regulations 2026. This is Scotland’s version of Awaab’s Law. It will require landlords to investigate reports of damp and mould and start repairs within a set timeframe, but the government is yet to decide how long they will have.  

At some point, tenants will be given greater rights to keep pets and make alterations to rented homes, but the details (for example, when a landlord can refuse permission to keep a pet) still need to be thrashed out. And while the first rent control areas won’t be set up until at least 2027, we could see further details on which properties will be exempt.

Throughout the year

The government has also announced an overhaul MEES rules in the private rented sector and change the way Energy Performance Certificates are scored across all residential properties in England and Wales. The Warm Homes Plan pave the way for them to increase the minimum EPC for private rented homes to C by 2030, a policy that has been announced, but not yet signed into law.

This target leaves the PRS with a mountain to climb, and not long to climb it. Analysis by Reapit found that more than half of all privately rented homes have an EPC below C.