How we write
Editorial standards
How the guidance here is researched and reviewed, the claims we will not make, and how we keep the commercial side of the site out of the writing.
The rules in short
- Every factual claim is taken from a primary source and links to it.
- No superlatives, no invented statistics, no trust signals we cannot evidence.
- No advice and no recommendation, because we are not permitted to give either.
- No provider is named, ranked or favoured because of money.
- When we get something wrong we correct it and say that we have.
What we are trying to do
Publish guidance a landlord can act on, sourced well enough that they can check every word of it themselves.
Most landlord content online is either thin or quietly selling something. A great deal of it is also simply out of date, because it was written by rewriting an article that was itself a rewrite, and letting law has moved a long way in a short time. We would rather be useful, and say plainly where our interest lies: it is the quote comparison service, and these rules exist to keep it out of the writing.
The test we apply
Could a reader who distrusts us entirely verify this page from the links on it? If the answer is no, the page is not finished. That is a higher bar than being accurate, and it is deliberately the bar we work to, because a claim you cannot check is worth very little from a site that is paid when you buy something.
Guidance, not advice
Everything in the knowledge hub is general information. None of it is legal, financial, tax or insurance advice, and none of it is a personal recommendation.
Why this is a rule and not a disclaimer
Simply Quote Comparison Ltd is an Introducer Appointed Representative, and that permission allows us to introduce you to a quote service. It does not allow us to advise you, to recommend a policy or to tell you what is suitable for your circumstances. So the line between explaining and advising is not a stylistic preference here, it is the boundary of what we are permitted to do, and every page is written on the correct side of it.
What that looks like on the page
We will explain what rent guarantee cover does, what it usually excludes, and the questions worth asking about it. We will not tell you whether to buy it. We will explain what a section 8 ground requires and how a court treats it. We will not tell you whether to use it against your tenant.
Where you should take real advice
Possession proceedings, licensing enforcement, a disrepair claim, tax planning, and anything where a specific sum of money or somebody's home is at stake. A solicitor, an accountant or an authorised broker can advise on your own circumstances in a way that no website can, and the guides say so at the points where it matters most.
How a page is researched
From the primary source outwards, in this order, with the source linked next to the claim it supports.
| Where we look | What for | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| The legislation itself | What an Act or a statutory instrument actually says, read rather than summarised. | legislation.gov.uk, including the section and subsection number. |
| Official guidance and forms | How a duty works in practice, and which version of a prescribed form is current. | GOV.UK, the court forms service, a local authority licensing page. |
| Regulators and statutory bodies | Rules, registers and formal positions. | The Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Health and Safety Executive, the Information Commissioner. |
| Named industry bodies | Market practice, where the point is what the market does rather than what the law requires. | The Association of British Insurers, a deposit protection scheme. |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Sources we do not use
We do not cite another commercial site as authority for a legal point, and we do not treat a competitor's blog as a source for anything. We do not cite an article that cites an article. Where we cannot find a citable source for a claim, the claim comes out of the page rather than going in softened with "generally" or "usually".
Reading the section, not the summary
Where a point turns on what a statute says, we read the statute. Official summaries are written to be readable and they round the corners off, which is fine until the corner is the thing that decides your case. Several of the examples below exist because a summary and the provision it summarised did not say the same thing.
Three things we found by doing it this way
Real examples from the guides on this site, each of which contradicts advice currently published elsewhere.
Awaab's Law does not apply to private landlords
A great deal of landlord content says or implies that it does. The provision extending it to the private sector sits in the Renters' Rights Act 2026, it is marked prospective, it was not in force at Royal Assent, no commencement order has brought it into force, and the underlying duty still requires regulations that have not been made. Our damp and mould guide says that, rather than repeating a deadline that does not yet bind anyone.
Six of the grounds for possession are not available to you
GOV.UK lists 37 grounds for possession. Six of them require the landlord to be a social landlord, which means a private landlord reading the list has a materially wrong picture of the options. Our section 8 guide separates them out.
A late deposit is a curable bar, not a permanent one
It is widely written that protecting a deposit late permanently bars a possession claim. Section 215(2) of the Housing Act 2004 is narrower than that, and the bar can be cured. A landlord acting on the stronger version of the rule would give up a claim they were entitled to bring.
Why we are telling you this
Not to claim we never get anything wrong, because we will. It is to show what the standard is for: three points where the careful answer and the popular answer differ, and where the popular answer could cost a landlord real money. That is the whole return on reading the source.
Law that is not yet in force
A provision that has been passed is not necessarily a provision that binds you, and we do not blur the two.
The distinction we keep
An Act receiving Royal Assent is not the same as its sections being commenced, and a section being commenced is not the same as the regulations it depends on being made. Where something is coming but is not here, the guide says so, says what stage it has reached, and says what would have to happen next. Where a date has been announced we give it and name who announced it.
Why it matters more than it sounds
Because the alternative is telling a landlord to comply with a duty that does not exist, or telling them they have a remedy they do not have. Both are actively harmful, and both are common in content written by summarising a press release.
Which country's law we are describing
England, unless a page says otherwise, and pages say otherwise wherever it matters.
Why this needs stating
Housing law is substantially devolved. Notice periods, deposit rules, licensing, repairing standards and the route to possession all differ between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and in places they differ completely rather than in detail. A page that says "in the UK" about any of those is wrong somewhere.
What we do about it
The guides are written for England and flag the divergence where a reader elsewhere would be misled. Insurance is different: the panel quotes for property across the United Kingdom, so pages about cover apply more widely than pages about law.
Figures, statistics and prices
If we cannot source a number, we do not print it. That rule removes most of the numbers you see on sites like this one.
We publish no average premium
Landlord insurance pricing varies so widely by property, construction, tenancy type, claims history and postcode that an average is close to meaningless. An average premium is a figure that exists to be quoted rather than to be useful, and a reader who anchors on it will be misled about their own price. So there isn't one on this site.
The numbers we do publish
Figures set by law or by a scheme: a deposit cap, a notice period, a court fee, a licensing threshold, a penalty limit. Each links to the instrument or the official page that sets it, with the date, because these change and a reader needs to know which version they are looking at.
And where they come from
From the current instrument, not from a figure remembered from last year. Court fees are the clearest example: the numbers most landlord sites quote were superseded by a later fees order, so the page you are reading elsewhere may be quoting a fee you will not be charged.
Claims we will not make
This is not a promise, it is a build gate. Each phrase below fails the check that runs before the site deploys.
How the gate works
The list lives in one file in the codebase. A script reads it and scans every page of written content before the site is built, and a match stops the build. So the rule is not enforced by a writer remembering it, and adding a phrase to the list starts enforcing it everywhere at once.
What each of those would be hiding
- Price superlatives. We cannot see every price in the market, so we cannot know we are the lowest, and neither can any other comparison site that says it.
- Whole of market. A panel is a panel. Claiming to search everything is the single most common untruth in this sector.
- Recommendations. We are not permitted to advise, so "we recommend" would be a regulatory problem as well as a dishonest one.
- Manufactured trust. Star ratings, review counts, awards and "as seen in" logos appear only if they are real and verifiable. None are on this site today, which is why you cannot see any.
The same rule applies to fear
Letting property carries real risks, and a guide that soft-pedalled them would be useless. But we describe them at their actual size and do not inflate them to move a product. If a risk is rare, the page says it is rare, even on a page that sells cover against it.
Keeping the commercial side out
We are paid when someone takes out a policy. These are the rules that stop that from shaping the guidance.
No provider is named for money
No insurer or broker appears in a guide, is described favourably, or is positioned anywhere because of a commercial arrangement. Placement in the quote results is decided by the panel operator's system on the information you give it, not by us, and not by what anyone pays.
The guidance is not a funnel
A guide about section 21 notices exists to explain section 21 notices. It is not written to arrive at a reason to buy legal expenses cover, and where a guide does mention cover it says plainly what that cover does not do. Most of the knowledge hub has nothing to sell at all.
We disclose it rather than bury it
How the site makes money is stated on the about page, in our terms, and under the quote form itself. Our complaints policy tells you how to complain if you think a page crossed a line.
Review, dates and versions
Every page carries the date it was last reviewed, and that date is part of the information rather than decoration.
How often
Pages covering law that is actively changing are reviewed more often than the rest. Where a provision is awaiting commencement, the page is checked against the commencement position rather than left until someone notices. Where a figure is set annually, the page is checked when the new figure is due.
What a review actually involves
Re-opening the source, not re-reading our own page. A review that consists of glancing at the text and updating the date is worse than no review, because it certifies something nobody checked.
Legal review is separate
Our own research standard and a lawyer's sign-off are different things, and we do not present one as the other. Where a page has not been through legal review, it says so on the page.
Corrections
When we get something wrong we fix it, and where it mattered we say on the page that we have.
How to tell us
Email info@landlordinsuranceuk.com with the page and what you think is wrong. A link to a source is welcome and makes it faster, but it is not a condition: "this does not match what my council told me" is a perfectly good report and we will go and check.
What we do with it
Check the claim against the primary source, not against the page. If the page is wrong we correct it and update the review date. If a correction changes the substance of what a reader would have done, we note the correction on the page rather than quietly editing it. If we conclude the page was right, we will tell you why, with the source.
What we will not do
Remove a correct page because a provider dislikes it, or soften an accurate description of an exclusion because it makes a product look worse. The commercial relationship does not extend to the guidance, which is the entire point of this document.
Who writes it
Guidance is written and reviewed by the Landlord Insurance UK team against the sources cited on each page.
How a page is checked
Every factual claim is traced back to the source it cites before publication. Internal and external links are verified automatically, so a page cannot ship citing something that has moved or gone. Where a page covers an area with real legal consequences it is checked against the primary provision rather than against a secondary summary, which is how the examples earlier on this page came to light.
What we do not claim about ourselves
We do not describe the team as lawyers, brokers or advisers, because they are not, and a byline implying professional qualification would be the same kind of manufactured trust signal as an invented star rating. What the guidance rests on is the sourcing, which you can check yourself, rather than on who wrote it.
Holding us to this
This page is a standard we can be measured against, which is the only kind worth publishing. If a page on this site does not meet it, that is a reportable error, and we would like to hear it.