The Written Statement of Tenancy Terms
The Written Statement is a personalised legal document specific to each tenancy. It sets out the key terms of the tenancy agreement between you and your tenant — rent amount, payment frequency, deposit details, notice periods, and more.
Under section 36 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025, every landlord with an assured tenancy in England must provide this document. Failure to do so is a civil offence carrying a penalty of up to £7,000 per tenancy.
The Written Statement is unique to each tenancy — you cannot use a generic template because it must contain your specific tenancy details: landlord address, tenant names, property address, rent amount, deposit scheme, and so on.
RentCompliant generates this document for you in around 2 minutes. You enter the details, we produce a compliant PDF and email it directly to your tenant with a delivery confirmation. Cost: £15 per tenancy.
The Information Sheet
The Information Sheet is a standardised noticethat explains the Renters' Rights Act 2025 to your tenants — what the new legislation means for them, their rights, and how tenancies now work.
Unlike the Written Statement, the Information Sheet content is largely prescribed by the legislation. It is not personalised to your specific tenancy terms — it is a notice about the new law itself.
RentCompliant delivers the Information Sheet to your tenants for free. You provide the landlord, tenant, and property details; we send the document and give you a timestamped delivery record. Cost: free.
Why Landlords Confuse the Two
The confusion is understandable. Both documents:
- Are required by the Renters' Rights Act 2025
- Must be provided to tenants
- Have the same compliance deadline (31 May 2026 for existing tenancies)
- Are relatively new requirements many landlords have not encountered before
But they serve fundamentally different functions. The Information Sheet is about informing tenants of their legal rights under new legislation. The Written Statement is about documenting the specific terms of your individual tenancy. You cannot substitute one for the other.
What About the How to Rent Guide?
There is a third document that landlords sometimes confuse with the above: the How to Rent guide. This is a government document you have already been required to provide at the start of new tenancies for several years. It is a different document again — separate from both the Information Sheet and the Written Statement.
In summary: the How to Rent guide is a pre-existing requirement; the Information Sheet and Written Statement are new requirements under the Renters' Rights Act 2025. All three must be provided.
What Should Landlords Do Now?
The fastest path to compliance is:
- Step 1:Use RentCompliant's free service to deliver the Information Sheet to each of your tenants — takes 2 minutes per tenancy.
- Step 2:Use RentCompliant's £15 service to generate and deliver the Written Statement of Tenancy Terms for each tenancy.
- Step 3: Both deliveries are stored in your compliance dashboard as timestamped proof of compliance.
With 52 days to the 31 May 2026 deadline, there is still time to get ahead of this — but the volume of landlords who need to comply means this is not a task to leave until the final weeks.