Landlord compliance is no longer a background job

Over the years, one requirement has been layered on top of another.

Deposit protection arrived. Right to Rent checks followed. Smoke and carbon monoxide regulations changed. Five-year electrical inspections became compulsory. EPC requirements became increasingly important. The rules surrounding deposits, repairs, inspections, notices and evidence became progressively more detailed.

Then came the Renters’ Rights Act.

Since 1 May 2026, Section 21 has gone, most private rented tenancies have become assured periodic tenancies and landlords now need to understand and correctly use the appropriate Section 8 ground if they need to regain possession.

At the same time, enforcement has changed.

The Government has committed £60 million to help councils enforce the new rules. Local authorities have new enforcement responsibilities, Rent Repayment Orders can now reach up to 24 months’ rent in qualifying cases, and the maximum civil penalty for specified electrical safety failures can reach £40,000.

So compliance is no longer something that can sit quietly in the background.
It has become part of the day-to-day management of a rental property.

The biggest change for self-managing landlords is time

I speak to many self-managing landlords across St Ives, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Ely and the surrounding Cambridgeshire villages who are perfectly capable of managing their own property.

The question is no longer: “Can I do it myself?”

It is: “How much of my time am I prepared to give it?”

Take something as straightforward as a gas safety certificate. It isn’t simply putting a renewal date in the diary. Someone needs to identify when it is due, contact the contractor, arrange access with the resident, chase the appointment, receive the certificate, check it, store it, send it where necessary and then deal with any work identified.

Now repeat that process across electrical safety, repairs, inspections, deposits, Right to Rent, rent reviews, complaints, notices and all the other obligations surrounding a modern tenancy.

And increasingly, doing the job is only half the job – you need to be able to prove you did it.

• When was the repair reported?
• When did you reply?
• When was the contractor instructed?
• What did the contractor recommend?
• When was the work authorised?
• When was it completed?
• Where is the evidence?

That is where an enormous amount of the time in modern property management now goes.

If a self-managing landlord spends just 50 hours a year running their portfolio, that is more than a working week.

If you value your own time at £100 an hour, that’s £5,000 of your time before you’ve paid for a single contractor, certificate or repair.

Self-management may still make complete sense. But the decision needs to be based on the job as it exists in 2026, not the job as it existed ten or fifteen years ago.

And if you use a letting agent?

Don’t simply assume all this is being done. Ask.

• Who monitors the compliance dates?
• What happens before a certificate expires?
• Who checks the certificate when it comes back?
• How are repairs recorded?
• Where is the evidence of communications with residents?
• Who keeps the team up to date when legislation changes?
• What happens if the person who normally deals with compliance is on holiday?

A management fee tells you what you are paying, it doesn’t necessarily tell you what system is sitting behind your property.

What property management now looks like at Maxine Lester

Our service has had to change enormously because the industry has changed enormously. Finding the right resident and ensuring the rent is paid remain important, but today they are only part of properly managing a rental property.
Behind each property we need systems:

• We monitor compliance dates.
• We arrange safety inspections and certificates.
• We chase contractors.
• We review documents when they come back.
• We record communication.
• We carry out property inspections.
• We follow repairs through.
• We communicate with residents.
• We monitor changing legislation and Government guidance.
• And when something changes, we change our processes.

We also don’t take over a property and simply assume everything already in place must be correct. In fact, one figure from our own business has concerned me enormously.

78% of the new properties we have taken into management since the Renters’ Rights Act came into force arrived with at least one compliance issue that needed addressing.

That doesn’t mean 78% belonged to bad landlords. Quite the opposite.

In many cases, the landlord genuinely believed everything was correct.
It might be a missing document, be following an old process, be incorrect information, a gap in the evidence or something in legislation that had changed without the landlord realising.

That is why modern compliance cannot depend on somebody having a very good memory.

And the changes haven’t finished

The Renters’ Rights Act wasn’t one enormous change that happened on 1 May and then stopped.

The Government’s roadmap says the new Private Rented Sector Database will begin rolling out from late 2026. Landlords will be required to register and provide information about themselves and their properties, including important safety information.

The new PRS Landlord Ombudsman comes later, with mandatory landlord membership currently expected in 2028.

Further reforms around property standards, including Awaab’s Law and the Decent Homes Standard, are also still to come.

So the question for Cambridgeshire landlords needs to be:
“Have I got a system that keeps me compliant when the rules change again?”

Self-managing landlords need a system, not a good memory

I have enormous respect for landlords who manage their own properties well. Many have been doing it successfully for years. But the risks increasingly sit in the detail.

• A missed date.
• The wrong form.
• An incomplete record.
• A repair completed but not properly documented.
• A notice served using an outdated process.
• A certificate that exists but cannot be found when somebody asks for it.

Modern property management is increasingly about being able to evidence what happened as much as making sure it happened.

That’s what has changed.

And it’s why our job at Maxine Lester has changed too.
We are no longer simply here to let a property and collect the rent.

We are here to put the infrastructure around it: compliance, records, communication, inspections, repairs, rent management and the constant changes in legislation.

So, if you manage your own rental property in Cambridgeshire, here’s the question I’d leave you with:
If somebody asked you tomorrow for the complete compliance history of your property, how quickly could you produce it?

If the answer is, “I’m not completely sure,” that is probably the place to start.

Give us a call. We can look at where you are now, what’s already right, what might need attention and whether continuing to self-manage still makes sense for you.
Being a landlord can still be a very good business.
But in 2026, it needs to be managed like one.