The government’s flagship Renters’ Rights Act has been thrown into fresh uncertainty, with promised reforms now facing delays that could leave millions of tenants exposed well into 2026. Ministers had trumpeted September 2025 as the month when no fault evictions would finally be abolished and the rental sector “reset for a fairer future.” Yet the deadline has quietly slipped, fuelling accusations that the government is stalling under pressure from landlords.
At the heart of the problem is the scale of the overhaul. The Act is supposed to ban Section 21 evictions, scrap fixed term tenancies, limit rent hikes, and introduce a national landlord register, a seismic shift not seen since the Housing Act of 1988. But insiders admit that the plan to introduce these changes in a single big bang rollout has proved far more complex than first imagined. New court processes, ombudsman structures, and national databases are all still in the works, making the original September 2025 target increasingly impossible.
The delay has ignited a political row. Tenant campaigners accuse ministers of betraying renters, pointing out that every month of drift leaves families vulnerable to sudden evictions and soaring rents. Landlord groups, meanwhile, are lobbying fiercely, warning that the reforms could drive investors out of the sector altogether and shrink the already limited supply of rental homes. For the government, caught between promises of radical change and fears of destabilising the housing market, the postponement risks looking like a climbdown.
Officially, ministers still insist the bill will pass into law by late 2025. But crucially, commencement, the point at which renters actually feel the protections, may not come until early 2026. That means millions will head into another year with little more than assurances, while the battle between landlords and tenants intensifies.
The Renters’ Rights Act was supposed to end decades of insecurity in the private rented sector. Instead, the delays have left renters in limbo and opened a political fault line that shows no sign of closing.