CHECKLIST
New Tenancy Setup Checklist
About fifty minutes, and most of it has to happen before the tenant moves in rather than afterwards. Almost everything on this list carries a deadline attached to the day the tenancy starts or the day you take the deposit, and missing one can cost you the right to serve a section 21 notice years later, exactly when you need it.
- Five sections, twenty checks, fifty minutes
- The deposit clock, the cap, and the paperwork that voids a section 21
- England, because Wales and Scotland run their own regimes
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Who this checklist is for
Landlords in England taking on a new tenant, whether it is the first tenancy or the fifteenth, who want the deadlines met while they are still meetable rather than discovered in a possession hearing.
You have just taken a deposit
The clock is already running. It has to be in an approved scheme within 30 days of the money arriving, with the prescribed information served in the same window, and the clock does not pause for referencing or a delayed move-in. Protecting the deposit but forgetting the prescribed information is still a failure, and it is the commoner of the two.
You assume you could serve a section 21 if you had to
Only if the file is right. An unprotected deposit, a missing Energy Performance Certificate, no gas record, the wrong version of How to Rent, or an unserved electrical report each block the notice on their own. The whole point of doing this list at the start is that most of these cannot be fully repaired later.
You have furnished it and want the tenant in this week
Speed is exactly when things get skipped. The smoke alarm has to be tested on day one and recorded, the carbon monoxide alarms have to be in the right rooms, and the property may need a licence depending on the street, not just the city. One extra day of checking is cheaper than one void notice.
FACTS
The deposit cap most landlords still get wrong
Five weeks of rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, six weeks where it is £50,000 or more. Take more than that and the excess is not a deposit at all, it is a prohibited payment, and it has to be returned before a section 21 is valid.
20 checks
Five sections
30 days
To protect the deposit and serve the prescribed information
FACTS
Three certificates, three clocks
The gas record renews every year and must reach a new tenant before they move in. The electrical report renews every five years and must reach the tenant within 28 days of inspection. The EPC lasts ten years. The checklist ends by diarising all three, because the renewal you miss is the one nothing reminded you about.