Renters' Rights Act: No DSS, No Children, Blanket Bans — What Landlords Can't Do

What was already unlawful before the Renters' Rights Act?

Before the Renters' Rights Act 2025, "no DSS" advertising was already potentially unlawful under the Equality Act 2010, because refusing housing benefit claimants disproportionately affects women and disabled people — both protected characteristics. However, enforcement was poor because it required individual tenants to bring claims rather than being enforced proactively by regulators.

The legal basis for challenging "no DSS" policies under the Equality Act 2010 rested on indirect discrimination. The argument, upheld in several county court cases from 2019 onwards, was that:

• A disproportionate number of housing benefit claimants are women (often single parents)
• A disproportionate number of housing benefit claimants are disabled people
• A blanket ban on benefit claimants therefore has a disparate impact on protected groups
• This constitutes indirect sex discrimination and indirect disability discrimination under the Equality Act

The problem was that enforcement required affected individuals to bring claims in court or tribunal. Most prospective tenants who were rejected do not know their legal rights, cannot afford legal representation, and move on to find another property rather than litigate. As a result, the existing legal protection had minimal practical impact on advertising practices in the sector.

Similarly, refusing tenants who have children can constitute indirect discrimination against women under the Equality Act (since women are more likely to be single parents) and in some cases could engage protections for single parents more broadly. Again, enforcement was primarily individual-led.

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 adds a parallel statutory prohibition that is enforced by public bodies — local councils and Trading Standards — rather than by individual tenants. This shifts enforcement from reactive (tenant brings a claim after being refused) to proactive (council investigates advertising practices).

What the Renters' Rights Act 2025 prohibits

The Renters' Rights Act makes it a civil offence for landlords and letting agents to advertise rental properties with blanket restrictions based on receipt of housing benefit or other welfare payments, or on having children or dependants. The prohibition applies to advertising on portals, in agents' windows, on websites, and in any other medium.

Specifically unlawful from 1 May 2026:

The prohibition extends to internal policies and criteria that function as blanket bans, even if not stated in public advertising. For example, an agent's internal referencing system that automatically declines any applicant on benefits, without individual assessment, would constitute a blanket ban even if the advertising itself does not use explicit "no DSS" wording.

Who the prohibition applies to

The prohibition applies to:

• Individual landlords advertising directly
• Letting agents advertising on behalf of landlords
• Property portals that display landlord or agent advertising (with obligations to remove non-compliant adverts)

Both the landlord and the agent can face liability where the advertising breach occurs. This is not a situation where the agent's liability shields the landlord. If a landlord instructs an agent to advertise with a blanket restriction, the landlord may face liability regardless of whether the agent carried out the instruction.

What landlords can still lawfully do

Landlords can still carry out individual affordability assessments, require guarantors, use income-to-rent ratios, carry out credit checks, take up references, and consider property suitability. The prohibition is on blanket bans, not on individual assessment. The key is that criteria must apply equally to all applicants and must be assessed on an individual basis.

The following tenant selection practices remain entirely lawful:

Individual affordability assessment

You can assess whether an individual applicant can afford the rent. For a benefit claimant, this means assessing their total income including:

• Universal Credit housing element or Local Housing Allowance rate for their household size
• Any employment income
• Other benefit income (child benefit, disability benefits, etc.)
• Any other declared income sources

If their total income genuinely does not meet your affordability threshold, you can decline the application — as you would for any applicant of any background who fails the affordability test.

Income-to-rent ratio

You can set an income-to-rent ratio as part of your application criteria. A common threshold is that gross annual income should be at least 30x the monthly rent. This is a lawful criterion as long as:

• It applies equally to all applicants
• Benefit income is counted in the assessment, not automatically excluded
• The ratio is genuine and not set artificially high to functionally exclude benefit claimants while appearing income-neutral

Guarantor requirements

Requiring a guarantor is a lawful affordability measure. You can require guarantors from applicants who do not meet your income threshold, including benefit claimants who cannot demonstrate sufficient income. The key is consistency: if you require a guarantor from a benefit claimant, you should also require one from an employed applicant with the same income level. Applying guarantor requirements only to benefit claimants while waiving them for employed applicants with similar incomes would be discriminatory.

Credit checks and referencing

Carrying out credit checks and taking up references remains lawful. A poor credit history is a legitimate reason to decline an application, regardless of the applicant's employment status or benefit receipt. Again, the assessment must be individual — a credit check that automatically fails anyone on benefits (rather than genuinely assessing credit history) would not be lawful.

Property suitability assessment

You can consider whether a property is genuinely suitable for the applicant's circumstances. A studio flat may not be appropriate for a household of four. A property with no outdoor space may not be suitable for a family with young children who need safe outdoor play. These are individual assessments based on property characteristics, not blanket policies.

The test is: are you making an individual assessment of this applicant's ability to afford and maintain the tenancy, or are you applying a blanket rule based on a category they belong to? Individual assessment is lawful. Categorical exclusion is not.

Housing benefit, Universal Credit, and LHA: the practical reality

Many landlords have refused benefit claimants for pragmatic reasons rather than prejudice: concerns about Local Housing Allowance rates not covering market rent, the timing of direct payments, or the complexity of UC claims. The Renters' Rights Act does not eliminate these practical concerns, but it means landlords must address them through individual negotiation and assessment rather than categorical exclusion.

The practical concerns that landlords have historically cited about benefit claimants include:

Local Housing Allowance not covering market rent

LHA rates are set by reference to the 30th percentile of local rents. In many areas, particularly London and the South East, LHA rates significantly lag behind actual market rents. A tenant receiving LHA may not receive enough to cover the market rent for a property they want to rent.

This is a legitimate concern, but the solution is individual affordability assessment, not a blanket ban. If a particular applicant's LHA entitlement plus any other income is genuinely insufficient to cover the rent, that is a basis to decline the application. If another benefit claimant has sufficient total income (LHA plus employment income, for example), declining them on the basis of benefit receipt would be unlawful.

Direct payment timing

Universal Credit is typically paid monthly in arrears. Some landlords prefer tenants who can pay rent at the beginning of the month from employment income. Under UC, the claimant receives payment and is expected to pay their landlord from it.

This can be addressed through alternatives to a blanket ban: requesting that UC housing element be paid directly to you as the landlord (which tenants can request from DWP), or using direct debit arrangements. These are individual solutions to a practical concern, not reasons to exclude all UC claimants categorically.

Mortgage lender conditions

Some buy-to-let mortgage products contain conditions restricting the type of tenant permitted — for example, prohibiting housing benefit tenants. This has been used as a justification for "no DSS" policies.

The Renters' Rights Act does not accept this as a lawful defence. Your obligations under the Act are not reduced by your mortgage conditions. If your mortgage prohibits benefit tenants and you comply with that condition, you are still breaching the Act. The solution is to switch to a mortgage product that does not contain this restriction — many lenders removed this condition following earlier legal pressure, and the number of compliant products has increased. Speak to a buy-to-let mortgage broker about your options.

Families with children: what the rules mean in practice

Landlords cannot refuse to consider an application, or include wording in an advert, that excludes families with children as a blanket category. A property can be assessed for suitability for particular household compositions, but the assessment must be individual and based on genuine property characteristics, not a blanket "no children" policy.

"No children" has been a common restriction in property advertising, often rooted in concerns about property wear and damage. The Renters' Rights Act makes this restriction unlawful, on the basis that it amounts to indirect sex discrimination (since women, particularly single mothers, disproportionately head households with children).

What you can still do:

• Note in your advertising that the property has no garden and may not be suitable for young children who need outdoor space — this is a factual property description, not a blanket ban
• Carry out an individual assessment of whether the property size is suitable for the household size — a one-bedroom flat is genuinely unsuitable for a household of five, regardless of the presence of children
• Decline an application where the property genuinely cannot accommodate the number of occupants safely (applying Houses in Multiple Occupation standards if relevant)

What you cannot do:

• Advertise "no children" or "adults only" as a blanket restriction
• Decline an applicant solely because they have children without individual assessment of suitability
• Apply a blanket policy that any property in your portfolio is "not suitable for children" regardless of individual property characteristics

HMOs and shared housing

Houses in multiple occupation rented by individual tenants typically have specific occupancy arrangements. If you let individual rooms in an HMO, you can reasonably decline a family seeking to occupy a single room that is not designed for family occupation — this is a property suitability assessment. What you cannot do is have a blanket policy that children are not permitted in the HMO.

How enforcement works

The Renters' Rights Act anti-discrimination provisions are enforced by local councils and Trading Standards. Landlords or agents found to have advertised or operated blanket bans face civil penalties. The fines are unlimited in theory, though in practice councils will apply proportionate penalties based on the severity and frequency of the breach.

The enforcement route is important to understand. Unlike the Equality Act 2010 (which requires an individual to bring a claim), the Renters' Rights Act enforcement mechanism is regulatory:

1. A tenant, competitor, or member of the public can report discriminatory advertising to the local council or Trading Standards
2. The council investigates the complaint
3. If a breach is found, the council can issue a compliance notice requiring removal of the discriminatory advertising
4. If the landlord or agent fails to comply, or if the breach is serious, the council can impose a civil penalty
5. Civil penalties can be challenged through the First-tier Tribunal

In addition to the Renters' Rights Act route, tenants who were actually refused a property on discriminatory grounds can still bring claims under the Equality Act 2010. The two enforcement routes exist side by side.

The role of property portals

Rightmove, Zoopla, and other portals have operated voluntary policies against discriminatory advertising for several years, in response to earlier legal pressure. Under the Renters' Rights Act, portals have a more formal obligation to remove non-compliant adverts when they are identified. If you advertise directly on portals, review your current listings to ensure they contain no blanket restriction wording.

Civil penalties: what are the fines?

The Renters' Rights Act provides for civil penalties to be imposed for breaches of the anti-discrimination provisions. The exact penalty scale is set in regulations. Civil penalties under the Act for various other breaches range from £5,000 to £40,000 depending on severity and repetition. The advertising discrimination provisions are expected to attract similar penalty levels, with lower penalties for first-time minor breaches and significantly higher penalties for repeated or egregious violations.

Letting agents: joint liability and your obligations

Letting agents who advertise with discriminatory wording on behalf of a landlord face liability under the Renters' Rights Act independently of the landlord. Both the agent and the landlord can be penalised. Agents who follow landlord instructions to use discriminatory advertising are not protected from liability by the fact that the landlord requested it.

For letting agents, the practical requirements are:

• Remove all "no DSS", "no housing benefit", "no children", and similar blanket restriction language from all current advertising — immediately, not just from 1 May 2026
• Update standard advertising templates to remove any such language
• Train staff to decline landlord instructions to include discriminatory wording
• Review referencing processes to ensure they do not automatically decline benefit claimants without individual assessment
• Update terms of business to reflect the Act's requirements

For landlords who use agents:

• Do not instruct your agent to include discriminatory wording in advertising
• Review your agent's standard advertising for your properties and confirm it is compliant
• Ask your agent to confirm in writing that their referencing processes include individual assessment of benefit claimants rather than blanket exclusion
• Include a clause in your agency agreement requiring compliance with the Renters' Rights Act anti-discrimination provisions

What this means for your tenant selection process going forward

Compliant tenant selection under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 means applying consistent, individual, income-based criteria to all applicants. It means assessing each application on its merits, including benefit claimants and families with children, and making decisions based on documented affordability assessments rather than categorical exclusions.

In practical terms, this means:

Document your decision-making process for every application. If you decline an application, note the specific reason: affordability threshold not met, credit history concern, or property suitability. A documented, individual, consistent process protects you if a discrimination complaint is made.