Questions answered

Rent Repayment Orders: your questions answered

The questions tenants ask us most often. This is general information about the law in England, not advice on your own case — if you want that, ask us, and it’s free.

The basics

What is a Rent Repayment Order?

It is an order from a tribunal requiring your landlord to repay rent to you, because they committed one of ten housing offences while you were living there. You apply for it yourself, directly, to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). Your landlord does not have to have been prosecuted or convicted first.

Councils were prosecuting very few landlords for these offences, so since April 2017 private tenants have been able to take action themselves.

Which offences can I claim for?

Ten offences qualify. The main ones are letting an unlicensed HMO or an unlicensed house in a selective licensing area; illegal eviction or harassment; using or threatening violence to get in; failing to comply with an improvement notice or a prohibition order; and breaching a banning order.

Three more were added for offences committed on or after 1 May 2026: knowingly or recklessly misusing a possession ground, breaching the rules on letting or marketing after using the moving-in or selling grounds, and continuing or repeated breaches of the tenancy reform rules. For the first two of those you do not need to have been the tenant when the offence was committed — which is the point, since the person harmed is usually the tenant who was already evicted.

Most applications are for licensing, and licensing is usually the easiest offence to prove. You can apply on one ground or several — but note that you get one award, however many offences you prove (Ficcara v James [2021] UKUT 38 (LC)). Pleading a second offence strengthens the case; it does not double the money.

Do I need a solicitor?

No. Most applicants do not have one. The First-tier Tribunal is less formal than a court, and the process is mostly paperwork: gathering documents and writing clearly.

Our guide, our step-by-step page and our free advice are all aimed at people running their own applications.

Is this the same as reporting my landlord to the council?

No, and you can do both. An RRO is money repaid to you. Council enforcement is a criminal prosecution or a civil penalty, and any money goes to the council, not to you.

They interact usefully, though. An RRO application almost always prompts the landlord to apply for a licence, which brings the council in and gets the property inspected.

Does this apply in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland?

No. Everything on this site is about the law in England. Scotland and Wales have separate regimes, and the rules are different.

Can I apply?

Who can apply?

Anyone who occupied the property as their only or main home and paid rent for it. That includes assured tenants, licensees, lodgers, property guardians, and occupiers who have only basic protection.

Council and housing association tenants, and tenants of the NHS, the armed forces, the police or a fire authority, are outside the licensing schemes, so a licensing claim is not available to them. Illegal eviction, harassment and violence to secure entry are not excluded — a social tenant who was illegally evicted can apply.

One of those bodies appearing somewhere in the ownership chain does not automatically take a building outside licensing either. What matters is who is actually the person having control of, or managing, it.

My agreement says “licence”, not “tenancy”. Does that stop me?

Usually not. Many licence agreements are shams. If there is no resident landlord, you are most likely a tenant whatever the paper says — that has been the law since Street v Mountford in 1985.

And in any event, licensees can apply for a Rent Repayment Order too.

Does my immigration status or nationality matter?

No. Anyone can apply, whatever their nationality or immigration status. You can apply from abroad if you have someone in the UK to receive correspondence.

Giving evidence by video from another country is possible but needs arranging in advance — see taking part from abroad.

I paid my rent in cash. Can I still claim?

Yes, though it is harder. Show the cash withdrawals, or where the money came from, around the dates you paid, and cover the dates and amounts in a sworn witness statement.

I am a student. Am I excluded?

Only if you lived in a university or college hall run by the establishment itself. That exemption depends on who manages the building, not on how the building was designed.

A privately operated student block is not exempt. The Upper Tribunal has twice held that cluster flats in private purpose-built student accommodation are houses in multiple occupation, and that the student exemption does not reach private operators. Signing up to a student accommodation code of practice makes no difference to licensing. Private blocks usually sit outside mandatory HMO licensing, because a building containing three or more self-contained flats is taken out of it — but they are caught by additional and selective licensing where the council has a scheme.

We have recovered rent for well over a thousand students in exactly these blocks. And an ordinary shared student house let by a private landlord is an HMO like any other. If you lived in either, ask us.

Can my housemates and I apply together?

Yes, and you should. Several occupants of the same property can go in on one application with one application fee, and multiple applicants make a much stronger case because you are each other’s evidence.

If you are a joint tenant applying without the others, you recover only the share of the rent you actually paid, even though you were jointly liable for all of it.

I was getting Universal Credit or Housing Benefit. Does that matter?

Yes, and it may matter more than anything else. The amount the tribunal can order for a period is the rent paid by or on behalf of you, less any relevant award of universal credit paid to anyone in respect of rent under the tenancy for that period. Rent met by housing benefit can only be recovered by the local authority, and only if the authority applies itself.

So if your rent was met in full throughout, your own recovery may be nil however serious the offence. This is the first thing we check on any enquiry, and it is the most common reason a strong-looking claim is not worth running.

If you received partial Universal Credit, apply for the rent you paid yourself and the award is split proportionately. For a licensing offence the months you claim do not have to run continuously, so you can choose the months where you paid most of the rent yourself.

Licensing

How do I find out whether the property needed a licence?

Write to the council. Do not rely on the online licence register — registers are frequently out of date, incomplete, and silent about applications that have been made but not yet decided. Ask three things: whether the property was licensed and for what period; whether a licence application was made and on what date; and what the council treats as a duly made application. Their written answer is your key document, not a register screenshot.

Also check which scheme applied and when it ran. Additional and selective schemes are declared by individual councils, have start and end dates, and can have boundaries that change street by street.

What are the three licensing schemes?

Mandatory HMO licensing applies across England and generally catches properties with five or more occupants in two or more households. It does not catch a purpose-built flat in a block of three or more self-contained flats, and it does not catch converted blocks of flats of the kind covered by section 257. That exception is why private student blocks usually sit outside mandatory licensing — and it is also why additional and selective licensing matter so much for them.

Additional HMO licensing applies only where a council has declared a scheme, and typically catches smaller house shares.

Selective licensing also applies only where a council has declared a scheme, and catches any private let in the designated area — including single-family houses and self-contained flats.

In some boroughs almost every private let needs a licence. If you live in a shared house, the odds are good.

My landlord lived in the property too. Does that change things?

It can, but far less often than landlords claim — and the answer is different for each of the three schemes. This is the most misunderstood corner of licensing, so do not take a landlord’s word for it.

The rule to hold on to. There is no blanket exemption for a live-in landlord. A building occupied only by the owner, their household and no more than two other people is not an HMO at all — paragraph 6 of Schedule 14 to the Housing Act 2004, the figure of two being set by regulation 6(2) of the 2006 Miscellaneous Provisions Regulations. Once a third other person is there, that exemption goes, and the landlord and their household then count towards the threshold like anyone else.

Two conditions are easy to miss: the landlord must personally hold the freehold or a lease of more than 21 years, and actually live there. It does not cover a rent-to-rent operator, a head tenant subletting, or a live-in “landlord” on a short lease. Because Schedule 14 removes HMO status for the Act as a whole, the exemption applies to mandatory as well as additional licensing — it is not an additional-scheme rule, though it is often described as one.

Mandatory HMO licensing. Where the property is an HMO, the landlord and anyone in their household count towards the five. A live-in landlord, their partner and three tenants is five people in two or more households, and with three others rather than two the Schedule 14 exemption has gone — licensable.

Additional licensing. The same exemption bites much sooner here, because these schemes catch smaller houses. A live-in owner with two tenants is outside the HMO definition; add a third tenant and the property is an HMO, and from that point the owner and their household are counted as occupants alongside the tenants.

Selective licensing. Occupancy numbers are irrelevant. What matters is that the letting is exempt where you share an amenity with the landlord, the licensor or a member of their family — a toilet, personal washing facilities, a kitchen or a living room. Sharing only a staircase, corridor or storage area does not exempt it, and sharing with your fellow tenants rather than with the landlord does not either. A self-contained flat let by a landlord living in another flat in the same house shares no amenity and is not exempt — that is a live claim, not a dead one.

And note the exemption is from selective licensing only. It does nothing about HMO licensing. This matters in places like Liverpool, where the council runs a selective scheme and no additional HMO scheme: a property can be an HMO in fact and still fall within selective licensing, because it is not an HMO that Part 2 requires to be licensed.

Never write a case off because “the landlord lived there”. Establish who holds the title first, and ask us.

When does a licensing offence stop?

When a duly made application for a licence reaches the council — not when the licence is finally issued, and not when an entry appears on a register. That date cuts off the period you can claim, and it drives your deadline.

At a minimum a duly made application needs the form completed and the fee paid, but the criteria vary between councils — ask a senior environmental health officer for their policy in writing.

Whole days count, and they count in the landlord’s favour. If an element of the offence falls away part-way through a day — a housemate moves out and the house drops below the licensable number — that entire day is treated as a day the offence was not being committed. The offence can therefore end a day earlier than you assume, and your deadline moves with it.

My landlord says it was the managing agent’s fault.

Expect this; it rarely works on its own. The licensing offences are strict liability with a reasonable excuse defence, and ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Not being told by the council, the agent or the tenants makes no difference.

For offences on or after 1 May 2026 this defence became harder, not easier: the landlord has to show they took all reasonably practicable steps to get the property licensed. Signing a management contract and never checking is unlikely to be enough. Ask what the landlord actually did to satisfy themselves a licence had been obtained, and put them to proof.

Two details are worth knowing. The knowledge limb of the defence is about not knowing the building was an HMO — not about not knowing it needed a licence. And a term of your tenancy or licence agreement does not on its own amount to a defence, which is aimed squarely at the rent-to-rent lease that promises the intermediary will obtain all the licences.

One genuine exception: if the council itself told the landlord no licence was needed, that is a different argument.

How much, and how long have I got?

How much rent can I get back?

It depends on when the offence was committed. For an offence committed before 1 May 2026, up to 12 months’ rent. For an offence committed on or after that date, up to 24 months’ rent.

Those are maximums, reserved for the most serious cases. Published awards run from under 10% to the full maximum; most land between about 25% and 85% of the rent for the period.

As a rough guide: 90–100% for the most serious — deliberate evasion by a professional landlord, serious fire safety or condition failings, or illegal eviction by force. 75–85% for a professional landlord with several properties unlicensed for two years or more. 60–65% for a non-professional with a single property, long unlicensed, few conduct issues. 45% for the owner of a small portfolio with one HMO. 25% where the property became licensable part-way through the tenancy, or a first-time landlord was not alerted by their agent. Under 10% for genuine, evidenced hardship.

Be careful of anyone who tells you 25% is the worst case. A landlord with a properly evidenced hardship case — precarious finances, serious illness — can bring an award below 10%.

How does the tribunal decide the amount?

It does not start at 100% and take deductions. It works out the whole rent for the period; removes any part of it that was really payment for utilities you consumed; decides how serious this offence was, expressed as a proportion of the rent; and then adjusts for the conduct of both sides, the landlord’s financial circumstances and any relevant conviction.

Landlords very often plead poverty. If yours does, ask the tribunal to require it to be properly evidenced — recent tax returns and evidence of expenditure — rather than an account given from the witness box.

My landlord has already been prosecuted or fined for this. Does that help?

A great deal, and more than it used to. Where the landlord has been convicted of the offence, or has received a financial penalty for it with no prospect of appeal, the tribunal must award the maximum. The same applies where the landlord has at any time been convicted of, fined for, or had a rent repayment order made against them for the same offence — whether or not it related to your tenancy or your property.

Before 1 May 2026 the licensing offences were carved out of that rule. They no longer are. And an unlicensed HMO offence and an unlicensed house offence now count as the same offence as each other, so a record for one triggers the maximum on the other.

So ask the council whether any civil penalty has been issued against your landlord, for what offence, and whether the appeal period has expired. It is the single most valuable enquiry you can make. Since 1 May 2026 the maximum civil penalty for Housing Act 2004 offences is £40,000, with national starting points of £17,000 for failing to licence an HMO and £12,000 for a selective licence property — so penalties are being issued more often and for more money.

Also search the tribunal decision databases for the landlord’s name and their companies’ names, check the rogue landlord database, and look for prosecutions, which councils often publicise. If you find one, say so in your application and ask for the maximum as of right.

How long do I have to apply?

Two years for an offence committed on or after 1 May 2026; twelve months for an offence before that date. The clock runs from the offence, and for a continuing offence such as unlicensed letting it does not start until the offence stops.

If your landlord’s offence ran across 1 May 2026, this is not yet settled. Nobody knows for certain whether the two-year window carries the whole application, including the months before 1 May 2026, or whether the earlier part keeps its own twelve-month deadline. There is no decision either way and the official guidance does not address it. We work to the cautious answer — treat the pre-May part as needing an application by 29 April 2027 — and we would not advise anyone to rely on the more generous reading. If your dates are anywhere near this, talk to us now rather than later.

The Upper Tribunal has held that you must apply the day before the anniversary of the last whole day of the offence. So if a licence was applied for on 13 February 2025, the application had to be in on or before 11 February 2026. Work your date out carefully, then apply well before it.

What changed on 1 May 2026?

The Renters’ Rights Act doubled the maximum from 12 to 24 months’ rent, doubled the deadline from one year to two, added three new offences, and — the big one — opened up who you can claim from.

Before the Act, an order could only be made against your immediate landlord. Now a superior landlord — usually the property owner — and the directors and officers of a company landlord can be made to pay as well.

My landlord’s offence started before 1 May 2026 and carried on after it. Which rules apply?

Both. The claim splits at midnight on 30 April 2026: the old rules govern the months before, the new rules the months from 1 May onwards. You still bring a single application, and you set out the split in it.

So an offence running from, say, March to June 2026 gives you the rent for March and April under the old rules, capped at twelve months, and the rent from 1 May onwards under the new rules. If there is a rent-to-rent company in the chain, the part from 1 May is the part that can reach the property owner. Ask us if this is your situation — the arithmetic is fiddly and the deadlines differ.

My landlord is a company with no money. Is it worth it?

It used to be the killer objection, because an order could only be made against your immediate landlord — often a rent-to-rent company with no assets.

For offences committed on or after 1 May 2026 you can also name the superior landlord, usually the property owner, and any director or officer of a company landlord where the offence was committed with their consent or connivance or is down to their neglect. If you wrote a case off on this basis before, it is worth looking at again.

For earlier offences, directors of a company landlord cannot be respondents, because they are not landlords (Kaszowska v White [2022] UKUT 11 (LC)). There is one exception worth knowing: for illegal eviction and harassment, the Protection from Eviction Act allows a director to be pursued personally, whatever the date.

Name everyone in one application. You can drop a respondent later; adding one after the deadline may be impossible.

The process

What does it cost?

£114 to apply and £227 to be heard. If you win, the tribunal will normally order the landlord to reimburse those fees.

If you are on a low income or certain benefits you may pay nothing. Apply for help with fees at gov.uk/get-help-with-court-fees at the same time as the application, not afterwards — and note you need a separate application for each fee.

How long does it take?

The tribunal's own rhythm is at least three months from application to hearing, with the decision following one to six weeks later. In practice, allow four to six months from applying to holding a decision — listing takes longer than the minimum, a case management hearing adds a few weeks, and directions slip.

Your own effort comes in three lumps: gathering evidence before you apply, preparing your bundle, and answering the landlord’s bundle before the hearing. In between there are long quiet stretches.

What evidence do I need?

Proof you paid rent — an online banking search saved as a PDF is far better than a pile of statements. Your tenancy or licence agreement. The council’s written confirmation of the licensing position and dates. The registered title, showing who owns the property. And, for an HMO, who else lived there, in which rooms, when, and which facilities were shared.

Collect this while you still live there if you can. It is much harder a year later.

What is the hearing like?

Normally in person, at the tribunal, and usually half a day or less, before a judge and often a surveyor member. You will be asked questions about your witness statement. Take your bundle and your figures, and allow time to get there.

Video hearings do happen, but they are the exception rather than the rule — for example where a party or a witness is abroad. If you need to attend remotely, ask the tribunal early and give your reasons; it is not something to raise on the day.

If the offence is still running, update your rent figures before you go in — the claimable period keeps growing up to the hearing.

Will there definitely be a hearing?

Usually, and if the facts are in dispute there has to be. Because a rent repayment order requires the tribunal to be satisfied that a criminal offence was committed, the Upper Tribunal has held that an application involving disputed facts must be decided at a hearing, and that this is so even where both sides have consented to a decision on the papers (Raza v Bradford Metropolitan District Council [2021] UKUT 39 (LC)). A tribunal also cannot make findings about your credibility on the papers without giving you the chance to answer (Wilson v Campbell [2019] UKUT 363 (LC)).

Paper determinations do still happen, most often where the offence is admitted or undisputed and the only live question is how much. Large group claims are sometimes dealt with that way.

The practical upshot: say yes if the form asks whether you would accept a decision on the papers. It costs you nothing, because if the facts turn out to be disputed the tribunal has to list a hearing anyway. But write your bundle as though nobody will get the chance to ask you a question.

I live abroad now. Can I take part from another country?

Often, yes — but it has to be arranged in advance and it is not automatic.

You can apply for a Rent Repayment Order from abroad provided you have someone in the UK who can receive correspondence for you. Giving evidence from abroad is the part that needs permission: the tribunal has a discretion to allow it, and whether it can depends on the country you are in. Some countries permit a person to give evidence to a UK tribunal by video without any special step; others require permission to be requested case by case; for some there is no arrangement at all. The government publishes a country-by-country list at gov.uk — taking and giving evidence by video link from abroad.

The President of the Property Chamber has issued guidance on witnesses giving evidence from abroad, and it is worth reading before you ask.

Ask in good time. Tell the tribunal as early as you can — ideally when you apply, and certainly not on the day. Say which country you will be in. Where permission has to be sought from that country it can take a while, and a late request may mean the hearing goes ahead without your evidence.

What if they do not pay?

The order can be converted into a county court judgment and enforced, including by a charging order against the property. Enforcement is a separate step, and it works.

We give our clients free advice on how they can enforce an unpaid award.

Could I end up paying my landlord’s costs?

It is rare. The First-tier Tribunal is not the county court and costs do not simply follow the event. But costs are not impossible where a party behaves unreasonably, so behave reasonably and meet the tribunal’s deadlines.

Getting help

What can Flat Justice do for me?

Three things, and the first two are free. We publish a full guide for people running their own applications. We give free advice by email or phone while you do it. And we can run the case for you on a no-win, no-fee basis — we pay the tribunal fees, prepare the submissions and advocate at the hearing, and charge 20% of what is actually recovered, payable only once the money arrives.

If an award goes unpaid, we give our clients free advice on how they can enforce it.

I still live in the property. Should I wait until I move out?

Please do not simply wait it out. An unlicensed property is by definition one the council has never inspected, and unlicensed properties are where the serious hazards are found — fire doors, escape routes, electrics, overcrowding.

An RRO application almost always prompts the landlord to apply for a licence, which brings the council in. Most unlicensed properties need works before a licence can be granted. Making the application is one of the more reliable ways of getting your home made safe.

Section 21 — the no-fault eviction notice — was abolished on 1 May 2026. Your landlord can no longer evict you simply because you applied. They must rely on a stated ground, and knowingly or recklessly misusing one is itself an offence you could bring a further Rent Repayment Order for. The exception is a resident landlord, where your security is limited.

If you are worried about your immediate safety, contact your council’s private sector housing team now, without waiting for anything else. Being a sitting tenant does change the tactics, so talk to us about your situation first.

When would you tell me not to bother?

When the respondent has no assets and no one else can be named. When the evidence is too thin — you have to prove a criminal offence to the criminal standard. When the landlord is bankrupt, in liquidation or in prison. When the claim is harassment only, which is much harder to win than people expect. And when the landlord has a genuine reasonable excuse, which does occasionally happen.

We will tell you straight. It costs nothing to ask.

Not answered here?

Ask us — advice is free, whether or not we end up acting for you. Or take the full guide, which covers everything here in much more depth.