The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force in stages, and the big one landed on 1 May 2026. It is the largest change to renting in England in a generation. It does not change a single thing about end-of-tenancy cleaning, and that catches people out.
This is general information for London tenants, landlords and letting agents. It is not legal advice. For advice on your own tenancy, talk to Shelter, Citizens Advice or a solicitor.
The short version
We have cleaned London rentals since 2014, and the question we have had on repeat since the spring is some version of: “Does the new law mean I don’t have to clean?” So here is the honest answer up front.
- The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (chapter c.26) received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025. It commences in phases. The main tenancy reforms switched on in England on 1 May 2026. Scotland and Wales have separate law and are unaffected.
- The cleaning rules did not change. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 still bans landlords from making you pay for professional cleaning as a term of your contract. That has been the law since June 2019, and the new Act leaves it alone.
- You still have to hand the property back at the cleanliness standard recorded on your check-in inventory. That rule is untouched.
- Section 21 “no-fault” evictions ended on 1 May 2026. Existing assured shorthold tenancies converted automatically to periodic assured tenancies. You can give two months’ notice at any time.
- Pets are the quiet change that matters most for cleaning. You now have the right to request one, and your landlord cannot demand pet insurance or a separate pet deposit. The deposit cap is the only financial cushion against pet damage and cleaning.
- Cleaning is still the number-one cause of deposit disputes. The Tenancy Deposit Scheme reported cleaning in 54% of the disputes it adjudicated in the year to March 2025. If a deduction is heading your way, our free deposit-back toolkit covers what can be deducted, how to prepare the check-out and how to dispute it well. None of that changed in 2026.
The law that governs your cleaning obligation at check-out is the Tenant Fees Act 2019, not the Renters’ Rights Act. Anyone telling you the new Act changed the cleaning standard, in either direction, has not read it.
What is in force now, and what is still to come
The Act does not arrive all at once. The government set out a phased roadmap, and as of late May 2026 only the first phase is live. Here is the split, because the headlines have blurred it.
| Change | Status (late May 2026) | When |
|---|---|---|
| Council investigatory powers (inspect, demand documents, access data) | In force | 27 December 2025 |
| Section 21 “no-fault” eviction abolished | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| ASTs converted to periodic assured tenancies | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| Rent rises once a year by Section 13 notice, challengeable at the First-tier Tribunal | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| Rental bidding banned (no offers above the advertised rent) | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| Rent in advance limited (no large up-front lump sums) | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| Right to request a pet; no pet insurance or pet deposit allowed | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| Ban on refusing tenants for children or benefits | In force | 1 May 2026 |
| Landlord must give existing tenants the official information sheet | In force (deadline 31 May 2026) | 1 to 31 May 2026 |
| Private Rented Sector Database (registration to get a possession order) | Still to come | Regional roll-out from late 2026, full launch 2027 |
| PRS Landlord Ombudsman (compulsory for every landlord) | Still to come | Expected 2028 |
| Awaab’s Law for the PRS (fixed deadlines for damp and mould) | Still to come | Subject to consultation, widely expected 2027 |
| Decent Homes Standard extended to the PRS | Still to come | Subject to consultation, around 2035 |
None of those rows, present or future, touches the clean at the end of your tenancy. The whole point of this article is the part the news coverage skips: what any of it means for your deposit. So let us go through the live changes first, then the cleaning.
What actually happened on 1 May 2026?
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 is the largest overhaul of the English private rented sector in more than thirty years. The Bill received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and the bulk of the tenancy reform switched on six months later, on Friday 1 May 2026. If you rent or let in London, here is what flipped.
Tenancy type. Every existing assured shorthold tenancy (AST) in England converted automatically to a periodic assured tenancy. No new paperwork on the tenancy itself. No fixed end date. It just rolls monthly or weekly.
Section 21. Gone. Landlords cannot serve a new Section 21 “no-fault” notice from 1 May. A notice validly served before that date still counts, but the landlord has to apply to court for possession by 31 July 2026, or by the end of the notice’s normal six-month validity if that falls sooner, or it lapses. That transitional rule is the kind of thing solicitors will be earning their fees on all summer.
Your notice. Two months’ written notice, given at any time, with the end date lining up with your rent period. The old fixed-term break clause no longer holds under the new regime.
Rent increases. Once a year, by a statutory Section 13 notice (Form 4A), with at least two months’ notice. Rent-review clauses in old tenancy agreements stopped being enforceable on 1 May. If you think the proposed rent is above market, you can challenge it at the First-tier Tribunal, and the tribunal can no longer set a rent higher than the landlord asked for.
Rent in advance. A landlord or agent can no longer demand a big lump of rent up front to win a tenancy. Before the agreement is signed they cannot require any rent at all, and once it is signed they can ask for one month at most. That kills the “pay six months in advance” tactic that priced a lot of London renters out.
Pets. You gained a legal right to request a pet. The landlord has to respond in writing within 28 days and can only refuse with a good reason, such as a ban in a superior lease. This was argued right up to the Report Stage in the House of Lords, and the final Act does not let landlords require pet damage insurance. A proposed three-week pet deposit was debated and dropped, so it never made it into the final version either. The deposit cap holds.
Discrimination and bidding. It is now unlawful to refuse a tenancy because someone has children or claims benefits. It is also unlawful to invite or accept offers above the advertised rent, which is meant to be the end of bidding wars.
Paperwork. Landlords have to give existing tenants the government’s official information sheet, and for tenancies that were already running on 1 May the deadline to do that was 31 May 2026. Get this wrong and the local authority can impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000 for an initial breach, rising to up to £40,000 for serious or repeat breaches. This one is going to catch out a lot of smaller landlords who are not paying attention.
That is the summary of phase one. The full chapter-and-verse runs on GOV.UK (Guide to the Renters’ Rights Act). What we care about on this blog is what any of it means for the clean at the end of your tenancy.
Does the Renters’ Rights Act change end-of-tenancy cleaning rules?
No. Not directly, and not indirectly. End-of-tenancy cleaning in England is still governed by the Tenant Fees Act 2019, which came into force on 1 June 2019 and which the new Act leaves untouched.
The 2019 rule is simple. A landlord cannot require you, as a term of the contract, to pay for professional cleaning at the end of your tenancy. A clause that says “the tenant must pay for a professional clean on check-out” is a prohibited payment. It is unenforceable. If your agreement contains one, your landlord cannot hold you to it, and charging it can attract a civil penalty of up to £5,000 (more for repeat offences).
Here is the bit people miss. The landlord can still require you to return the property in the condition it was in when you moved in, as recorded by the check-in inventory. GOV.UK guidance is explicit: a tenant can be obliged to leave the property at a professional standard of cleanliness, they just cannot be forced to pay a particular firm to get it there. How you hit the standard is your call. DIY, your regular cleaner, or a specialist end-of-tenancy firm, all legal. The test is the result at check-out, not the method or the receipt.
So the Act reshapes evictions, tenancy types, rent rules and pet policy. It does not touch cleaning. The standard you owe is exactly what it was on 30 April 2026, and exactly what it will be on any check-out for the rest of the year. What changed is the context around it. And that part matters.
What does “clean to the check-in standard” actually mean in London?
The inventory benchmark is the single most misunderstood thing in London renting. It is also where deposit disputes live.
Your check-in inventory, the document handed to you when you moved in, describes the condition of the property in detail, usually with photos. Oven: clean, no residue. Bathroom tiles: grout white, no limescale. Carpets: recently cleaned, no staining. Room by room, down to the light switches and the skirting boards.
In most London rentals we have cleaned, and that is now well over 40,000 properties, the check-in condition was set by a professional end-of-tenancy clean. Either the previous tenant booked one, or the agency had the place done before letting. That is the benchmark. It was set by professional kit, professional products and a proper checklist.
This is what catches tenants out. “Clean” at check-out is not your standard. It is not “cleaner than I usually keep it” or “cleaner than after Christmas.” It is the benchmark. And the benchmark was set by someone doing exactly what we do: oven stripped to the glass, washing-machine seal degunked, limescale taken off the shower head, grout scrubbed, the fridge pulled out and cleaned behind.
Fair wear and tear covers gradual decline from normal use. Faded paint after three years. A worn patch on the hall carpet. Minor scuffs. It does not cover built-up grime, limescale, grease or pet mess. Those are cleaning issues, and they come off your deposit.
Slower evictions, more planned move-outs
Here is a knock-on effect of the Act that nobody booked us about, but that is already changing how the work lands. With Section 21 gone, a landlord who wants the property back has to use one of the Section 8 grounds and prove it. Rent arrears, the landlord selling, a family member moving in, antisocial behaviour, each ground has its own notice period and its own evidence test.
The practical result is that possession takes longer than it used to. A no-fault Section 21 was quick and needed no reason. A Section 8 case can run for months, especially if it is contested, and the county courts are not fast. For tenants that is more security. For the move-out clean it means two things.
First, fewer panicked same-week jobs driven by a two-month Section 21 clock. Second, more planned, predictable move-outs where the tenant is giving their own two months’ notice and choosing the date. We can schedule those properly. The chaos slot, the call at 6pm asking if we can clean a flat by 9am because the keys are due back, is getting rarer.
One thing has not changed: the clean still has to be done, and it still has to match the inventory, whether you left because you chose to or because the landlord got a possession order. The reason for the move-out has never affected the cleaning standard, and the Act does not change that.
The move-in standard cuts both ways
The bidding-war ban and the rent-in-advance limit are framed as tenant wins, and they are. But they also tighten how the check-in standard is set, and that is worth a paragraph because it feeds straight into your deposit two years later.
When a landlord could take offers over the asking rent and a lump of rent up front, some of them were relaxed about the move-in clean. The property let anyway. From 1 May the rent is fixed at the advertised figure and the up-front money is capped, so landlords are competing on the home itself. We are already getting more pre-let cleans booked by agents who want the property to show well and let fast.
That matters to you at check-out. If the place was professionally cleaned before you moved in, and more of them now are, the check-in inventory records that standard. That is the bar you are measured against when you leave. A higher move-in standard means a higher check-out standard. So the quiet effect of the bidding rules is to push the whole cleaning benchmark up at both ends of the tenancy.
The pet angle nobody is talking about
If one 2026 change is going to reshape the London end-of-tenancy market, it is pets.
Hold two facts together. Industry analysis from lettings platforms put London listings marked “pet-friendly” in the single digits before the Act, while a large share of renters say they would consider getting a pet now the right to request one exists. The gap between the supply of pet-friendly homes and the demand for them is wide, and the new right is closing it.
Now the quiet problem. The final Act dropped the clause that would have let landlords require pet damage insurance, and the proposed separate pet deposit never made it in either. Government took the view that the existing deposit, capped since 2019, was enough to cover the extra risk. So that deposit is now the only financial buffer against pet damage and the cleaning that comes with it.
The cap, for the record, has not moved. It is five weeks’ rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks’ where it is £50,000 or more. In London, where deposits run higher than the England average of around £1,175, that buffer still has to stretch a long way. It has to cover end-of-tenancy cleaning, any wear-and-tear argument, and actual pet damage all at once: carpets that have soaked up hair for two years, skirtings that have been chewed, a sofa a cat has quietly re-upholstered.
What this means in practice, and what we are already seeing in the bookings since May:
- Pet-specific work is a bigger part of the end-of-tenancy spec now. Carpet hot-water extraction for dander, odour treatment, an upholstery deep clean, and the black ring in the washing-machine drum from washing pet bedding.
- Tenants with pets have the sharpest incentive of anyone to leave the place spotless, because cleaning costs and pet damage are competing for the same deposit pot.
- Landlords need dated, photographic check-in reports more than ever. If the carpets were new at move-in and shredded at move-out, that difference is deductible, but only with evidence.
- Some landlords are starting to specify a professional cleaning standard as a tenancy term. That is allowed. Specifying a standard is not the same as forcing you to pay a named firm. If a post-1 May agreement names a particular company or a minimum price, that part is unenforceable. If it asks for a standard and a receipt, it stands.
The dates London tenants and landlords need to know
Four matter most for the move-out itself.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 30 April 2026 | The last day a Section 21 notice could be served under the old rules. Any Section 21 served on or after 1 May has no legal effect. |
| 1 May 2026 | The main commencement date. Every existing AST in England converted to a periodic assured tenancy. Section 21 abolished. Pet-request rights, the anti-discrimination rules, the rent-in-advance limit, the bidding-war ban and the rest took effect. |
| 31 May 2026 | The deadline for landlords to hand existing tenants the government information sheet. Miss it and the council can fine up to £7,000. |
| 31 July 2026 | The long-stop for landlords with a pre-1 May Section 21 notice to apply to court for possession. Miss it and the notice is time-barred. |
Later stages of the Act bring a Private Rented Sector Database, where a landlord has to be registered to get a possession order through the courts, and a Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman that every private landlord must join. The Database starts a regional roll-out from late 2026 with a full launch in 2027, and the Ombudsman is expected to be running in 2028. Awaab’s Law, the damp-and-mould deadlines, is expected to reach private rentals around 2027 once the consultation lands, and the Decent Homes Standard for the PRS is pencilled in for around 2035. All of those are landlord-side and repair-side. None of them changes a tenant’s cleaning obligation at check-out.
For cleaning specifically, we expect move-outs to become more frequent and harder to predict now that tenants have two-months-notice flexibility at any time. The last three days of the month are already the busiest slot in London cleaning. From May on, that demand is spreading more evenly through the month. If you are moving out of a London rental, book your clean earlier than you think you need to.
What wins a London deposit dispute in 2026?
Dated, photographic evidence. That is most of the answer.
According to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, cleaning is the single most common cause of disputes, featuring in 54% of the cases it adjudicated in the year to March 2025, ahead of damage at 49% and redecoration at 31%. The reassuring part: only about 1% of protected deposits reach formal adjudication at all. The other 99% settle by agreement. Good evidence, from both sides, is what makes those settle fairly.
And when a case does reach adjudication, the starting point favours you. The adjudicator assumes the deposit money is the tenant’s, and the landlord has to prove their deduction. Where a landlord cannot produce a proper check-in inventory and check-out report, the schemes routinely reject the claim. Evidence is the whole game.
What the adjudicator wants to see:
- A dated check-in inventory with photos of every room and every item of note, ideally signed by both parties.
- A dated check-out report that mirrors the check-in, photo for photo.
- Receipts for any professional cleaning you commissioned.
- Correspondence with the landlord or agent: proposed deductions in writing, your written reply, any itemised breakdown.
- If you used a professional cleaner, an invoice on company-headed paper with the date, the address, and the scope of work.
What does not work: “It looked fine to me.” “I cleaned it myself and it was spotless.” Without supporting photos, those statements are close to worthless at adjudication. The adjudicator was never in the property. They are reading a file.
From 1 May 2026, the new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman will, once it launches, be able to offer mediation on tenancy disputes, which is useful for problems that come up during a tenancy such as damp or repairs. It is not running yet, and even when it is, the deposit dispute process itself, run through your protection scheme’s free adjudication service, stays exactly as it was.
What Monster Cleaning is doing about 2026
For the record: we have been the end-of-tenancy specialist for more than 300 London letting agents for over a decade. We run a 57-point inventory-matched checklist and a 48-hour re-clean guarantee, and our first-time pass rate at agent inspections currently sits around 97%.
None of that changed on 1 May. What changed is the volume and timing of the work. We are seeing:
- More mid-month move-outs as tenants use the two-months-notice-at-any-time right rather than running down a fixed term.
- More pet-inclusive cleans, with hot-water carpet extraction, upholstery deep clean and odour treatment added to more jobs.
- More requests for photographic evidence packs, because the deposit stakes are tighter and tenants want the proof on file.
- More coordination with the agents we work with on the new Section 8 possession grounds, which take longer to run than Section 21 ever did, so void periods and turnaround pressure both go up.
If you are moving out of a London rental any time soon, our advice is simple. Book earlier than you think you need to. Get a full photographic evidence pack from us on the day. And do not assume the new law has loosened your cleaning obligation, because it has not.
Our end-of-tenancy rate is £23 per hour per cleaner, all in, with a studio from £110 and a two-bed from £243. Carpet extraction adds from £36 a room on the same visit. Ring 0333 555 2076, see our end-of-tenancy cleaning page for the full scope, or contact us for a quote.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 mean I don’t need professional end-of-tenancy cleaning in 2026?
No. The Act does not change the cleaning obligation at all. You still have to return the property at the check-in inventory standard, and in London that standard is almost always set by a professional clean. Nothing about the 1 May 2026 changes makes self-cleaning more likely to pass inspection than before.
Can my landlord require me to pay for professional cleaning under the new rules?
No. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 still bans that clause as a prohibited payment, and the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 does not reverse it. A landlord can require the property back at the check-in standard, but cannot make you hire a specific firm or pay for a professional clean as a contract term. Any such clause is unenforceable.
I have a Section 21 notice served before 1 May 2026. What happens to it?
It stays valid, but your landlord must apply to court for possession by 31 July 2026, or by the end of its six-month validity if sooner, or the notice is time-barred and they start again under the new Section 8 grounds. Your cleaning obligation at move-out is the same whichever route the eviction takes: the check-in standard, under the Tenant Fees Act 2019.
Does having a pet change anything about my end-of-tenancy cleaning in 2026?
Practically, yes, even though the legal obligation is unchanged. From 1 May 2026 you can request a pet, and your landlord cannot require pet insurance or a separate pet deposit. The standard deposit is the only buffer against pet damage and cleaning, so professional carpet extraction and upholstery cleaning matter more when you have a pet, to protect a deposit that is now doing more work.
My tenancy converted to a periodic assured tenancy on 1 May. Do I need to do anything?
No, the conversion was automatic and you do not need a new agreement. Your landlord had to give you the government’s official information sheet by 31 May 2026, and failing to can cost them a civil penalty of up to 7,000 pounds. None of this changes your cleaning obligation at move-out.
I live outside London. Does any of this apply to me?
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 applies in England only. If you rent in Liverpool or Manchester, English rules apply, and we cover both cities too. If you are in Scotland or Wales, separate tenancy law applies and this Act does not touch you.
How long before my check-out should I book a professional end-of-tenancy clean?
For end-of-month dates, the last three days of any month, book seven to ten days ahead. Mid-month, three to five days is usually fine. From May 2026 onwards we expect mid-month demand to climb as tenants use the two-months-at-any-time notice right, so book earlier if you can.
What if my landlord is withholding my deposit over cleaning after 1 May 2026?
The process is unchanged. Your deposit is protected by one of three government-approved schemes (TDS, DPS or mydeposits), and you can raise a free dispute through their adjudication service. Submit your check-in inventory, check-out photos, the cleaner’s invoice and any correspondence. The adjudicator assumes the money is yours and makes the landlord prove the deduction, so good evidence is decisive.
About this post
Monster Cleaning has cleaned London rentals since 2014, across all 32 boroughs plus Greater Liverpool and Greater Manchester. We work with more than 300 letting agents, run a 57-point inventory checklist and offer a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. We are not lawyers. We are cleaners who have read the Act and spent a decade watching what wins and loses deposit disputes in London.
If you are planning a move-out and want the clean sorted properly, call 0333 555 2076 or see our end-of-tenancy cleaning page.