A new study suggests there are opportunities for lettings agents as landlords fail to engage with one of the first key deadlines imposed by the Renters Rights Act.

Freedom of Information (FOI) data suggests that the government-issued information sheet that landlords are legally required to provide to tenants under the Act was downloaded 153,000 times in the four weeks after publication. 

This compares with an estimated 2.3 private landlords who must serve it by May 31 or face penalties of up to £7,000 per tenancy.

While letting agents with multiple landlord and tenant clients may account for some of the gap, some analysts say the figures still raise questions about how widely landlords have engaged with the task.

Logan Ransley, co-founder of Landlord Studio, says: “Even allowing for reuse across portfolios, engagement with the official document looks low compared with the size of the private rented sector. 

“We know the property sector isn’t uniform – some landlords already have systems in place for managing compliance and others don’t, relying on more manual or informal processes.

“When you introduce something like this on a fixed deadline, it doesn’t land in the same way for everyone. 

“Some people will act straight away and others will take their time to understand how to track everything properly. 

“What enforcement tends to do is make those differences visible. Not because people don’t want to comply, but because they’re starting from very different operational setups.”

The full FOI response is publicly available via WhatDoTheyKnow.