Landlords confused over which How to Rent guide to issue

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Landlords are being urged to exercise caution when serving the statutory How to Rent guide to new tenants after confusion has arisen about which version is the most up to date following a recent update.

MHCLG have uploaded a new ‘easy-to-read’ How to Rent guide to its website which, apart from tacitly admitting the other 18-page guide is somewhat difficult to understand, appears to supersede it too.

Within the new easy-to-read guide, it says ‘the landlord should give new tenants an up to date copy of this guide’ whereas previous guidance was that landlords must serve the original, more long-winded version.

Landlords are under a statutory requirement to give tenants a copy of the How to Rent guide when the begin or renew a tenancy.

This is not nit-picking but could have expensive ramifications for landlords further down the line.

Eviction failure risk

To serve a Section 21 ‘not fault’ notice to evict a tenant legally, a landlord must have served the most ‘up to date’ version of the guide along with a valid EPC and Gas Safety Certificate.

Some landlords have taken to social media to ask which version they should serve – one saying: “I think the Government are just trying to confuse us all. The version they have published today is an easy read version, but the one published in Dec 2020 is still the latest version.”

Letting agent Phil Ashford says he believes that the main legislation covering this guide still says landlords and agents should ‘issue the main guide’ which is the December 2020 version.

“The easy read guide is not referenced and therefore [not] required,” he says.

LandlordZONE has put in an urgent request with MHCLG for clarification.

MHCLG has form when it comes to landlord documentation. In June last year it pulled the latest update to the Electrical Safety Standards after LandlordZONE pointed out that discrepancies in its wording were causing confusion among landlords and the wider industry.

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