MV/N-019 · Compliance

The information sheet, and the landlords who have not served it

5 September 2026 · 4 min read

Every regime of this kind produces one obligation that is trivial to comply with, easy to forget, and expensive to have forgotten. This is that obligation.

The Act required landlords to provide tenants with a copy of the government's information sheet by 31 May 2026. It is a document produced by government, not by the landlord. Serving it takes a few minutes.

It is precisely the sort of requirement that gets missed, because nothing happens when it is missed. There is no immediate consequence, no letter from anyone, no visible failure. The consequence arrives later, when a tenant's adviser reviews the file in defence of a possession claim and asks a question the landlord cannot answer.

Prove it, do not assert it

The question at a hearing is not whether the sheet was provided. It is whether the landlord can show it was provided. Those are different, and only the second is worth anything.

What answers the question: a dated email with the document attached, retained. A certificate of posting. A signed acknowledgement. What does not answer it: a recollection, an office practice, or a diary entry saying it was done.

The pattern to expect

The second phase of the Act arrives later in 2026, bringing the Private Rented Sector database and a landlord ombudsman. Both will generate registration and disclosure duties of the same character: quick to satisfy, invisible when neglected, and awkward when raised in defence.

The sensible response is not to treat each as a separate scramble. It is to keep one compliance record per tenancy — what was served, on what date, by what method, with the evidence attached — and to update it whenever a new duty arrives. A file assembled that way answers challenges as they come. A file assembled after a challenge rarely does.

• Confirm the information sheet was served on every tenancy, and that you hold evidence of service.
• Where you cannot evidence it, serve it again now and record the second service properly.
• Open a compliance record per tenancy before the database and ombudsman duties arrive.