In this guide 10 sections
- 1 How Do You Increase the Rent Legally?
- 2 When Can You Increase It?
- 3 How Do You Complete Form 4A?
- 4 How Do You Serve It and Prove It?
- 5 Can You Take Rent in Advance Instead?
- 6 What Happens If the Tenant Challenges?
- 7 What If the Tenant Just Does Not Pay the Increase?
- 8 How Much Can You Increase It By?
- 9 What Do Failed Rent Increases Look Like?
- 10 What Does It Mean for Your Cover?
You increase the rent on an assured tenancy by serving Form 4A under section 13, giving at least two months of notice, and no more than once a year.
The mechanics have not changed much. What changed on 1 May 2026 is what happens when the tenant objects.
A tribunal can no longer set a rent above the figure you proposed, and it cannot backdate its decision to your start date. Between them those two rules make challenging an increase close to risk free for the tenant, and that is the part worth planning around.
How Do You Increase the Rent Legally?
By serving the prescribed notice, Form 4A, under section 13 of the Housing Act 1988. It is the statutory route and in practice it is the only one.
The form is Form 4A
Form 4A is the landlord’s notice proposing a new rent for assured tenancies in the private rented sector in England, currently version 05.26.
The social rented sector uses Form 4. Assured agricultural occupancies use Form 5 in the social sector and Form 5A in the private sector.
Serving the wrong one puts the notice at risk before anyone has looked at the figure.
Section 13 now covers every assured tenancy
The rewritten section 13 applies to any assured tenancy other than a relevant low cost tenancy.
The old wording excluded tenancies whose agreement already contained a binding provision for the rent to go up. That exclusion has gone, so the statutory route is the one to plan around rather than a clause in your own agreement.
If you have been relying on a review clause, that is worth advice rather than assumption.
A month or less, and no more
Form 4A requires the tenancy period to be a month or less, at both the current rent and the proposed rent. Quarterly and annual arrangements do not fit this route.
Related: What the Renters’ Rights Act means for landlords
When Can You Increase It?
Three requirements have to be met at once, and the form sets them out itself.
The three tests
From Note A of Form 4A, which cites section 13(2) as amended by the 2003 Order and the Renters’ Rights Act.
| Requirement | What it means |
|---|---|
| Notice | Served at least two months before the new rent starts |
| Timing | First increase no sooner than 52 weeks after the tenancy began, later ones at least 52 weeks after the last |
| Start date | The new rent must begin at the start of a tenancy period |
Miss any one and the notice is vulnerable. They are cumulative, not alternatives.
The 52 or 53 week trap
Fifty-two weeks is slightly less than a calendar year, so a date set purely on 52 week intervals creeps earlier each year.
The rule stops that: the new rent date cannot be more than six days before the anniversary of your first increase after 11 February 2003. Where it would be, you wait an extra week, making 53.
That is why Form 4A asks, at question 4.4, for the date of your first increase after 11 February 2003. It is the most easily missed question on the form.
Start of a period, not a convenient date
GOV.UK gives the examples on the form itself. A monthly tenancy that started on the 20th takes the new rent on the 20th.
A weekly tenancy that started on a Monday takes it on a Monday.
Picking the first of the month because it suits your accounting will invalidate an otherwise sound notice.
How Do You Complete Form 4A?
Most of it is plain identification. A handful of entries decide whether the notice works.
The questions that matter
| Question | What it needs | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | Current rent and how often it is paid | A period longer than a month |
| 4.3 | Date of the most recent increase | Left blank when there was one |
| 4.4 | Date of the first increase after 11 February 2003 | Skipped, so the 53 week rule is missed |
| 4.5 | The proposed new rent and frequency | A different period from 4.1 |
| 4.6 | The date the new rent starts | Not the start of a tenancy period, or under two months away |
| 4.7 | Charges included in the rent | Including things the tenant pays directly to a third party |
Name every tenant
Question 1.1 takes the name of each tenant on a joint tenancy. The same discipline as any other notice, and the same consequence for missing one.
The email trap, again
Questions 2.3 and 3.3 note that if you give an email address you agree that the tenant and the tribunal may use it to serve documents on you.
That is convenient if you monitor the address and a problem if you do not. It is the same wording as Form 3A.
Related: Section 8 grounds for possession
How Do You Serve It and Prove It?
The form tells you to be able to evidence service, and gives you the acceptable methods.
What the form says
Form 4A’s own note to the landlord: you need to be able to evidence that you served the notice. If the written tenancy agreement specifies agreed methods of service, use one of those.
If it does not, you can hand it to the tenant in person, leave it at the tenant’s address, or send it by registered post.
Check the agreement first
That order matters. Where your agreement names a service method, that method governs, and posting a notice in a way the agreement does not allow is an argument you have handed over for free.
Record it at the time
Note the date, the method, and who served it, on the day. A challenge two months later is not the moment to reconstruct it from memory.
Can You Take Rent in Advance Instead?
No, not as a way round the rules. Rent payable before an assured tenancy is entered into is now a prohibited payment.
The Act closed this route
Schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 gained a new paragraph: a payment of rent is a prohibited payment where it is payable before the tenancy is entered into and the tenancy is an assured tenancy.
Asking for six months up front at the start, whether to de-risk a thin reference or to bank an increase early, is no longer available.
What that leaves
Referencing, a guarantor where the income is tight, and rent protection. Those are the tools now, and the first two cost nothing but time.
Related: Landlord legal expenses insurance
What Happens If the Tenant Challenges?
They apply to the First-tier Tribunal, and since 1 May 2026 the outcome can only match or reduce your figure.
The tribunal cannot go above your proposal
Section 7 of the Renters’ Rights Act inserted a new section 14ZB. It says the new rent is the open market rent if that is lower than the rent you proposed, and otherwise the rent you proposed.
So if the market rent turns out to be higher than your figure, you get your figure. Your own proposal is the ceiling, and asking for less than the market rate is now a decision you cannot be rescued from.
It cannot be backdated
If the tribunal decides before your start date, the rent runs from that date. If it decides after, the rent runs from the first tenancy period beginning on or after the determination.
Where applying either would cause the tenant undue hardship, the tribunal can direct a different date, but no later than two months after the determination.
What that combination means
| Before 1 May 2026 | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Tribunal could set a rent above the proposal | Yes | No |
| Determination could take effect from the notice date | Yes | Only if decided by then |
| Practical risk to the tenant of challenging | Real | Very little |
A challenge now costs the tenant an application and buys them time at the old rent. It costs you the difference for however long the case takes.
There is also a challenge to the opening rent
Section 14(A1) lets a tenant challenge the rent payable at the start of a tenancy, within six months of it beginning, and not where the rent already comes from a previous determination.
On that route section 14ZA applies, and the answer is the same shape: the open market rent if lower, otherwise the existing rent.
What If the Tenant Just Does Not Pay the Increase?
Then the shortfall is arrears, provided the notice was valid, and the arrears grounds work on it in the ordinary way.
Valid notice first
Everything here depends on the notice having been good. If it was not, the tenant owes the old rent and there are no arrears at all.
That is why the timing rules matter more than they look: they decide whether a later possession claim has a foundation.
The shortfall counts like any other arrears
Where the increase took effect properly, the difference accrues as arrears and feeds the mandatory and discretionary arrears grounds in the usual way.
It builds slowly, though, because it is the gap rather than the whole rent. Reaching the mandatory threshold on a modest increase can take a long time.
Deal with it early
A conversation in the first month resolves more of these than a notice in the sixth. Keep the rent account clean and record every contact, because that record is what a court reads later.
Related: How to protect a tenancy deposit
How Much Can You Increase It By?
There is no cap in percentage terms. The ceiling is the open market rent, and in practice your own proposed figure.
Open market is the test
The tribunal assesses what the property might reasonably be expected to let for on the open market, on the same terms and periods as the existing tenancy.
It disregards the effect of the tenant already being there, improvements the tenant made that they were not obliged to make, and any reduction in value caused by the tenant’s own breach.
Evidence is what decides it
Comparable local lettings of similar properties, close in date. That is the same material the tribunal will look at, so assembling it before you set the figure is more useful than assembling it after a challenge.
Setting it below market no longer buys safety
It used to be that a modest proposal carried a tail risk, because the tribunal could land on the market figure instead. That risk has gone, and with it the reason to under-ask.
Propose the figure you can evidence, because it is now the most you can get.
Related: Compare buy-to-let insurance
What Do Failed Rent Increases Look Like?
Both of these are failures, because the timing rules are where sound increases come apart.
The date that drifted
A landlord with a weekly tenancy has increased the rent every year on the first Monday of April, counting 52 weeks each time.
This year 52 weeks lands more than six days before the anniversary of their first post-2003 increase. The notice should have waited a further week to 53.
The tenant’s adviser spots it and the increase does not take effect. The landlord serves again correctly, having lost the difference for the intervening period and the goodwill along with it.
The convenient first of the month
A landlord with a monthly tenancy that began on the 20th serves Form 4A proposing the new rent from the 1st, because that is when their accounting period starts.
The third requirement is not met: the new rent has to begin at the start of a tenancy period, which is the 20th.
The tenant challenges, the notice fails on the date rather than the amount, and two months of notice have to run again from a fresh notice.
What Does It Mean for Your Cover?
A rent increase changes the sum at risk on any rent protection you hold, and a disputed increase is exactly when arrears start.
Tell the insurer the new figure
Rent guarantee cover is written against a stated monthly rent. Increase the rent and leave the policy at the old figure and you are insured for less than you are owed.
Related: Rent guarantee insurance
Disputed increases and arrears look alike
A tenant who disputes an increase may keep paying the old rent. Whether that is arrears depends on whether the notice was valid, which is the question you least want open when a claim is being assessed.
Getting the notice right is therefore part of protecting the cover, not just part of getting the rent.
Where to start
If the increase is part of a wider review of the tenancy, comparing landlord insurance quotes from UK insurers at the same time is the sensible moment, because the rent figure, the cover and the tenancy terms all move together.
Related: What happened to Section 21 notices?