Forum spotlight: How to rent guide

A landlord posted a question on our forum recently about whether they needed to provide the How to Rent guide to their current tenant.

They explained their tenant had been renting from them for about five years.

They wanted to know if they needed to provide the tenant with a copy of the How to Rent guide every time the Government publishes a new version of this.

It was their understanding that a new version must be provided if the contents of the booklet had changed. They wanted to know if this was a requirement or not and took to our forum for some advice.

The responses

One forum user replied to the question by saying that in their opinion, if the landlord was in any doubt about whether they needed to serve the how to rent booklet or not, they should serve it anyway to be on the safe side, adding that they had nothing to lose from doing this.

An adviser from our expert advice team then joined in on the thread, and was able to add some clarity.

They advised that our landlord should check if the tenancy agreement became a statutory periodic tenancy after the fixed term expired. If so, and the 'How to rent' guide was updated prior to this, the landlord should serve that version to the tenants and get evidence of this.

This is because the 'How to rent: a checklist for renting in England' should be served at the start of a tenancy and, crucially, it also needs to be served at the start of any subsequent tenancy if there has been an update to the document.

As a statutory periodic tenancy is a subsequent tenancy, landlords have to check at the start of the new tenancy to make sure they have served any updates on their tenants. If not they won't be able to successfully serve a Section 21 notice.

Contractual periodic tenancies, however, are not new or subsequent tenancies. As such landlords do not need to check if there has been an update or serve any extra copies on the tenant.