Ask low, stay low: the first 47 rent tribunal decisions under the Renters' Rights Act

How many rent tribunal decisions have there been under the Renters’ Rights Act?

Forty-seven, decided between 24 June and 26 August and published by 2 September 2026.

The register runs several weeks behind, so a decision made in August typically appears in September: every figure in this article counts decisions published by our cut-off of 2 September, and every figure will rise as more surface. Furthermore, which rules apply to a case is set by the date of the landlord’s notice, not the date of the tribunal’s decision. The Act’s rent rules took effect on 1 May 2026, and a notice served before that date is decided under the old law however long the case takes.

Put those two facts together and the picture sharpens. The First-tier Tribunal has decided 493 market rent cases since 1 May 2026, but 446 of those concern notices served before 1 May and are still working through the system under the old law. Only 47 were genuinely decided under the new rules. So counting everything the tribunal has done since 1 May as new-Act activity overstates the new regime’s caseload roughly tenfold, and larger figures built that way are already being quoted in the market.

Forty-seven decisions is an early read, and we treat it as one. It is also every decision published at our cut-off, a census of the register rather than a sample, and each case in this analysis is named, linked and checkable on the GOV.UK register.

Source: LonRes analysis of the GOV.UK residential property tribunal decisions register, 2 September 2026.

The rush before 1 May is what the tribunal spent its summer deciding

Those 446 old-rules cases are not background noise. Most of them exist because of the Act itself: landlords hurried to serve notices before the rules changed, tenants tested them, and that backlog is what the tribunal has been working through.

Over the first four months of 2026 the tribunal decided about 40 market rent cases a month. Then the Act’s rent rules arrived, and with them a surge of referrals lodged as landlords served notices ahead of commencement and tenants tested them: 113 decisions in May, 151 in June, 174 in July, and the most recent months are still filling in. Against the same three months of 2025, decisions have nearly trebled: 438 this summer against 154 last. Half of our old-rules comparison group, 70 of 136 cases, sits on a notice dated in April 2026 alone, the final month of the old regime.

Those last-minute notices show their haste. April-dated notices were priced more aggressively and fared worse at the tribunal than notices served earlier in the year: where the rent was cut, the median reduction was 7.2% against 6.2% for pre-April notices. And 20 of the 136 old-rules cases in our window ended with no rent set at all, the notice invalid, struck out, withdrawn, or the tribunal declining to determine. A last sprint under rules that were about to disappear produced high asks, loose paperwork, and a tribunal caseload that says more about the deadline than about the new law.

That rush is why counts of this summer’s tribunal activity look so large. Counting decisions, or referrals, measures the old regime’s closing stampede. Measuring the new regime means following the notice date, and that is what the rest of this analysis does.

The cap has already cost landlords money

Under the old rules, the tribunal set the market rent wherever the evidence pointed, including above the landlord’s proposed figure. This happened in 9% of the decisions we analysed last month. The Renters’ Rights Act removed that possibility: the determined rent is now the tribunal’s open market valuation or the figure on the notice, whichever is lower.

In the first 47 decisions, that cap has bitten again and again. Of the 45 cases that reached a determination, nine of them, exactly one in five, record the tribunal valuing the property above the landlord’s own notice, then awarding the notice figure because the law allowed nothing more. Tap through all nine below — each is a real decision on the public register.

The shortfalls run from £5 to £100 a month. A Section 13 rent increase can be served once a year, so an underpriced notice locks the gap in for 12 months: £60 to £1,200 a year per property, and across a managed portfolio that adds up quietly. Under the old rules a low notice was a mistake the tribunal could correct. Now it is a ceiling the landlord sets themselves.

What the old rules could still do this summer, and the new rules cannot

The sharpest way to see the change is the outcome the new rules abolished: a determination above the landlord’s own figure.

It still happened this summer, on the old-law side. In three of the 116 old-rules determinations in our comparison window the tribunal set the rent above the notice. In one, the landlord proposed £1,095 a month and the tribunal, weighing the evidence, determined £1,150: the tenant challenged, and the rent came out £55 higher than the landlord had asked. In another, a housing association case, the tribunal assessed the open market rent at more than three times the sub-market figure on the notice, a ceiling the landlord will never actually charge but one the old law required it to set.

On the new-law side the count is zero, and it will stay zero. None of the 45 new-regime determinations exceeded the notice, because none can: in the nine capped cases above, the tribunal wanted to award more and the law prevented it. A tenant referring a rent increase now faces no possibility of the number going up. That is the trade the Act made, and both sides of it are visible in a single summer’s decisions.

More notices are surviving intact

To see what else has changed, we compared the 47 new-regime decisions with 136 old-rules decisions made by the same tribunals in the same weeks, resolved at the same speed. It is the fairest like-for-like available, and outcomes are established for every case in both groups.

The clearest shift is that more notices are holding. 47% of new-regime determinations landed exactly at the notice figure, against 25% under the old rules, a difference large enough to clear the statistical bar we set in advance of the analysis. Where tribunals did cut, the cuts look shallower, at a median reduction of 4.0% against 6.7%, though on 47 cases that comparison remains suggestive rather than proven.

Part of the story is landlords pricing more carefully now the number is a ceiling. Part of it may be tenants referring more freely: a challenge under the new rules carries no risk of a higher rent, so weaker challenges to well-priced notices can reach the tribunal and fail. Both forces point the same way, and both reward the same discipline: a notice priced on evidence survives.

Two notices died before the tribunal set any rent at all

Not every landlord got as far as a determination. Two of the 47 referrals ended with the application struck out and no rent set. In a Stockport case, the proposed start date on the notice did not fall at the beginning of a rent period, and the tribunal found the notice invalid on its face; the same notice was also unsigned, gave no landlord contact details and even named the wrong town, but the tribunal needed none of that, because the date error alone made the notice invalid. In a Walthamstow case, the landlord conceded mid-proceedings that its own notice was invalid and served a fresh one, and since both parties agreed the original notice failed, the tribunal had no jurisdiction and struck the application out. No increase, re-serve, start again, with two months’ minimum notice and the once-a-year rule waiting on the other side.

This is not a new hazard, and the old-rules group proves it: 20 of those 136 cases also ended without a rent being set, most on defective notices. What has changed is the price of the mistake. Referring a rent increase to the tribunal costs a tenant £47 and carries no risk of a higher rent, so challenges to both the figure and the paperwork are now cheap to make, and a failed notice under the new rules costs the landlord a year’s timing. The correct form (Form 4A), the correct dates and a defensible number are no longer housekeeping; they are the whole game.

What the first decisions mean for the next notice you serve

The practical lesson of the first 47 decisions is that pricing has become a one-way risk, and evidence is what controls it.

Asking rents will not carry the argument. Tribunals weigh what comparable properties actually let for, and the Act itself has widened the gap between asking and achieved: landlords and agents can no longer accept offers above the advertised rent, so advertised figures are likely to be pitched high. A screenshot of an asking price is an aspiration. An achieved rent is the market, confirmed.

The agents adapting fastest are the ones treating the notice as a valuation exercise.

And when the challenge comes anyway, the evidence does the arguing.

Price the ceiling right: the LonRes Rental Checker

This is the gap the Rental Checker was built to close. It turns achieved rents contributed by letting agents across London into an impartial market rent report for a specific property: the number to put on the notice, and the evidence to stand behind it if a tenant refers it. Priced from what the market actually pays, an increase is harder to argue with, and far less likely to leave money above the cap.

Rental Checker reports are available to contributing LonRes members within the platform. The agents who contribute data get the data.

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