The rulebook for a mandatory landlord complaints scheme covering 11 million renters came into force this week. The government's own memo says joining one still is not mandatory, and does not say when it will be.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. The Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026 came into force on 18 September, setting out the conditions a scheme must meet before it can be approved or designated to handle tenants' complaints against their landlord [1]. The regulations' own explanatory memorandum calls this "mandatory landlord redress" [2]. The Act the regulations sit under says the opposite of mandatory: the Secretary of State "may" make regulations requiring landlords to join a scheme, a power not yet used [3]. The same memorandum confirms that power will only be used once a scheme exists and is "operationally ready", with no date attached to either step, and describes even inviting an organisation to run the scheme in the conditional tense [2]. Three documented mistakes: four stars.
Since 1 October 2014, any letting agent or property manager in England who wants to operate legally has had to join a government-approved redress scheme, so a tenant with a complaint has somewhere to take it [6]. A tenant whose landlord manages the property directly, which the government's own figures put at around half of England's private rented sector, has had nowhere equivalent to go [2]. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 was meant to close that gap for the 11 million private renters and 2.3 million landlords the government's own guide to the Act counts in England [4].
The Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026 were made on 16 September and came into force on 18 September, under section 65 of the Act [1]. They do not create a scheme. They set out, in a 20-condition schedule, what any scheme must contain before the Secretary of State will approve or designate it: an impartial "responsible individual" to decide complaints, redress orders capped at £25,000, an expulsion process for non-compliant members, five-yearly reviews, and postal and phone access for tenants who cannot go online [1]. It is detailed, and it is a rulebook. The question is what it is a rulebook for, right now.
"Mandatory" resting on a decision not yet made
The explanatory memorandum is direct about what the government is building towards: "The introduction of mandatory landlord redress is part of a package of reforms enabled through the Act which will transform the experience of private renting" [2]. It says the Act "enables the establishment of one or more redress schemes which all relevant private residential landlords in England will be required to join" [2].
The Act itself is written more carefully than "mandatory" suggests. Section 64(1) reads: "The Secretary of State may make regulations requiring a residential landlord to be a member of a landlord redress scheme" [3]. May, not must. Parliament gave the Secretary of State a power to switch mandatory membership on, not a duty to do so, and this week's regulations are not that switch: they are the conditions a scheme needs to satisfy before that separate decision can even be taken.
The memorandum spells out the sequence itself. "Once a scheme has been approved or designated and the Secretary of State is satisfied that the scheme is operationally ready, and all persons who are to be required to be a member of a landlord redress scheme are eligible to join the scheme... further regulations will be made under section 64(1) of the Act requiring residential landlords to be members of the scheme" [2]. That is three conditions and a second statutory instrument between where the law stands today and any landlord actually having to join anything, none of them dated.
A penalty that cannot be issued to anyone
The memorandum is equally explicit about what backs up expulsion, the scheme's own last-resort sanction: "expelled landlords will be liable for local council issued civil and, potentially, criminal penalties if they continue to operate without being a member of the scheme" [2]. Read on its own, that sounds like a landlord who is thrown out of the scheme has somewhere worse to go.
That liability is the same future regulation described two paragraphs later: the section 64(1) regulations that "will be made" once the government decides the scheme is ready, not regulations that exist today [2]. The government's own current guidance on enforcing the Act, covering every breach and offence a landlord can be fined for since the tenancy reforms took effect on 1 May 2026, from claiming a fixed-term tenancy to relisting a property too soon after evicting a tenant, does not mention redress-scheme membership once, because there is no duty yet to breach [5]. A landlord who never joins any scheme today faces no penalty for that at all, not because no scheme would take them, but because nothing yet requires them to be in one.
A rulebook nobody has been invited to use
Even choosing who runs the eventual scheme is left open. The memorandum's section on future guidance is written entirely in the conditional: "If the Ministry invites applications from third parties for approval of a landlord redress scheme, it may publish guidance for prospective applicants" [2]. That guidance, it adds, "would be made publicly available at the point at which invitations to submit a scheme are announced" [2]. Nearly eleven months after the Act received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and more than four months after the Act's higher-profile abolition of Section 21 evictions took effect, the document that sets the conditions for approving a scheme cannot yet say whether or when anyone will be asked to run one.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What the record actually shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "The introduction of mandatory landlord redress is part of a package of reforms..." [2] | Section 64(1) of the Act: the Secretary of State "may" make regulations requiring membership, a power not yet exercised; a further, undated regulation is needed [3] [2] | "Mandatory" describes a plan, not a rule in force |
| Expelled landlords "will be liable for local council issued civil and, potentially, criminal penalties" for operating outside the scheme [2] | That liability depends on the same not-yet-made regulations; the government's live enforcement guidance for the Act lists no such penalty because no such duty yet exists [5] | The penalty described cannot be issued to anyone today |
| The schedule "establish[es] a framework within which schemes can be designed" [2] | Inviting an organisation to run a scheme is written in the conditional: "If the Ministry invites applications..." with guidance to follow only once that happens [2] | The rulebook exists; nobody has been invited to use it |
The mistakes, counted
"Mandatory" describes a power, not a rule (1). The explanatory memorandum's own language, "mandatory landlord redress", gets ahead of section 64(1) of the Act it implements, which gives the Secretary of State a discretion to require membership, not an obligation that already binds a single landlord [2] [3].
The stated penalty for defiance does not yet exist (2). The memorandum's account of what happens to a landlord who operates outside the scheme, council civil and criminal penalties, is a description of a future regulation's effect, not of the law as it stands, and the government's own current enforcement guidance for the Act confirms it by omission [2] [5].
No timetable for choosing who runs the scheme (3). Almost a year after Royal Assent, the memorandum can only say guidance for prospective scheme administrators "would" appear "if" and "at the point" invitations are announced, with neither event dated [2].
Credit where due
The conditions themselves are not thin. The schedule requires postal and telephone access for tenants without internet access, a public register of expelled landlords, a five-yearly review that must consult both tenants and landlords, and a fee structure the Secretary of State must approve before it can rise [1]. The £25,000 compensation cap was set deliberately to match the existing cap for mandatory agent redress rather than picked arbitrarily, and tenants who think that limit too low keep the option of the courts [2]. The memorandum also documents real engagement before the conditions were drafted: the Ombudsman Association on good governance, the existing agent redress schemes and tenant and landlord groups on the practicalities, and the Information Commissioner on the data-sharing rules around publishing expelled landlords' details [2]. None of that was skipped to hit a deadline. What is missing is the deadline itself.
Verdict
Four stars, from three documented mistakes. The government has built a genuinely detailed rulebook for the redress scheme it promised 11 million private renters, and it consulted properly on the detail. What it has not done, eleven months after the Renters' Rights Act became law and four months after the Act's Section 21 reforms already changed how eviction works, is commit to when a scheme will exist, when anyone will be invited to run one, or when a landlord will actually have to join. A tenant reading the government's own description of "mandatory landlord redress" today would be forgiven for thinking that word already means something.
Sources
- The Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026, UK Statutory Instrument 2026 No. 1033, made 16 September 2026, in force 18 September 2026
- Explanatory Memorandum to the Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
- Renters' Rights Act 2025, section 64: Landlord redress schemes, legislation.gov.uk, as enacted
- Guide to the Renters' Rights Act, GOV.UK / Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, published 6 November 2025
- Enforcement measures for landlords: Renters' Rights Act 2025, GOV.UK / Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, published 1 May 2026
- Lettings agents and property managers: redress schemes, GOV.UK / Department for Communities and Local Government, published 7 October 2014, last updated 2 August 2018