The thing that makes being a landlord stressful is not the number of rules — it is not knowing which ones have a deadline attached. A deposit has 30 days. A gas certificate has a year. A tax return has a hard date in January. Miss any of them and the excuse "I didn't realise" costs money. None of it is hard once something is watching the dates for you; this is what those dates are.
General guidance — check GOV.UK for your own circumstances.
At the start of every tenancy
These are one-offs, but they are the ones with the sharpest penalties:
Get these wrong and it is not a reminder you missed — it is a penalty and, for the deposit, a blocked possession route.
Every year
The recurring safety and money jobs:
Every few years, and the long horizon
The tax dates that actually bite
Tax stops being one January panic and becomes a running job under MTD, which is only painful if the records are not already kept as you go.
The point of a calendar
None of these dates is individually hard. The danger is that there are a dozen of them, on different clocks, across every property you own, and one lapse (an expired gas cert, a deposit protected on day 31) can cost far more than a year of watching them. A landlord with two properties is tracking well over twenty separate dates.
How LetCompliance helps: it holds every one of these per property and scores each one 0–100, so instead of remembering twenty dates you look at one number, and a certificate about to expire, a deposit deadline, or a rent-review window surfaces as a prompt before it becomes a problem. The whole calendar, watched for you.
Sources
The dates that only exist because of 2026
Three of these are new, and a calendar built before May 2026 has none of them.
1 May 2026 — the Renters' Rights Act commenced. Fixed terms were abolished and every assured tenancy became periodic on that date. Section 21 went with it. This is not a date you diary going forward; it is the date that changed what everything after it looks like.
The How to Rent guide was withdrawn on 1 May 2026. If your check-in pack still includes it, remove it. New tenancies now require a written statement of terms instead.
The one-off Information Sheet for existing tenants. Tenants who were already in place before the changeover must be given the Renters' Rights Act information sheet. This is a catch-up duty, not something you repeat at every new let, and failing to do it is enforceable as a breach carrying a civil penalty of up to £7,000. If you have not done this for pre-May-2026 tenants, it is the single highest-value hour of admin available to you right now.
The long horizon: dates to budget against
These are too far out to sit in a diary and too expensive to discover late. Put a figure against each one now.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| April 2026 | MTD for Income Tax begins for gross property income above £50,000 |
| April 2027 | MTD threshold drops to £30,000 |
| April 2027 | Property income taxed 2 points higher: basic 22%, higher 42%, additional 47% |
| April 2028 | MTD threshold drops to £20,000 |
| 1 October 2030 | Minimum EPC rating rises to C for all privately rented homes |
Two notes on reading that table. The MTD thresholds are on gross income, not profit, so a landlord with £52,000 of rent and a large mortgage is in scope despite thin margins. And the EPC C requirement carries a £10,000 cost cap per property, inclusive of VAT and any grant funding, with a ten-year exemption if you spend the cap without reaching C. The maximum penalty for letting in breach is £30,000.
The EPC one is the only entry here you can act on early and save money by doing so. Insulation booked into a natural void in 2027 costs less than the same work booked into a deadline in 2029, when every landlord in the country is calling the same installers.
Turning a list of dates into something that runs
A calendar only works if it survives a busy month, and most do not. Three things separate the ones that hold.
Anchor dates to the property, not to you. "Gas safety, 14 March" is useless across four properties. "Flat 2, Bridge Street — gas due 14 March, last done by Hendry, £85" is a task someone can actually do, including someone who is not you.
Diary the renewal the day the certificate arrives, not when the reminder fires. The certificate landing in your inbox is the only moment you reliably have the expiry date in front of you.
Keep the proof, not just the date. For nearly every obligation on this page, the enforceable question is not "did you do it" but "can you show you did it, and that the tenant received it". A date in a calendar answers the first. Only a filed document with a service record answers the second.
Dates live against the property, not in a diary — gas, electrical, EPC, deposit deadlines and Section 13 timing, rolled into a 0–100 score so the portfolio position is one number instead of forty. The documents and the proof you served them sit in the same record, which is the half a calendar cannot answer. Put your dates somewhere they cannot be forgotten. First property free.
Frequently asked questions
What are the key dates and deadlines for landlords?
At the start of a tenancy: Right to Rent check before move-in, deposit protection within 30 days, and the move-in documents served. Every year: the Gas Safety check, and a rent review is limited to once every 52 weeks. Every 5 years: the EICR. The EPC lasts 10 years. Plus the tax dates — 31 January and 31 July for Self Assessment, and quarterly MTD updates (first due 7 August 2026) for landlords over the threshold.
How often does a landlord need a gas safety check and EICR?
A Gas Safety check (CP12) is annual where there is gas, with a copy to the tenant. An EICR (electrical safety report) must be satisfactory and renewed at least every 5 years, and given to a new tenant at the start of the tenancy. Both are easy to let slip because their clocks differ, which is exactly why tracking them per property matters.