Rent increases that stick.

If a tenant takes the increase to the First-tier Tribunal, the tribunal cannot give you more than you asked. The new rent starts from the first rent day on or after the decision, or from the date on the notice if the decision comes first. There is no backdating. Extra evidence cannot raise the figure — it can only help you keep it.

So the number on the notice is the whole decision. Ask too much and you may live with a cut for a year. Ask without checking and you may wait about 82 days for an answer — about 169 in the Midlands — and the answer can only match or reduce what you asked.

Local rents for similar homes

The suggested range comes first from comparable lettings you add to the review — your own lettings, an agent’s letter or a let-agreed listing — graded like-for-like and adjusted. Then from rents you have already achieved on similar homes. Tribunals treat real lettings as evidence. You already have them.

Where there are not enough, an area average (the ONS private-rent index or Local Housing Allowance) is shown and labelled as an area average, not evidence. It is never used to count up a potential rise in the rents-below-range report, and we do not invent a “flat on the next street” from a handful of far-away decisions.

It can go below today’s rent

If the tenant refers the increase, the tribunal decides the open-market rent. It can be below the current rent. The landlord sees that warning, and the evidence gathered so far, before approving. The review also records the condition and the improvements the tribunal must ignore.

What is contestable

Published decisions are too sparse to price one street: 478 market-rent decisions across 323 postcode districts after the Act, and only four districts have five or more. We use them to show risk, not as a comparable.

In Abide.Rent’s analysis of the first 77 tribunal decisions under the new rules, 60% set the rent below the landlord’s proposal, 40% confirmed it, and the median cut was 5%. In 18%, the rent did not go up at all. On a £1,500 rent proposed at £1,650, a 5% cut is about £990 in the first year. Next year starts from the lower rent. We show how often a figure like yours was cut, and what the parties argued about.

The earliest date — and a flag if it looks too early

Reviews are worked out from the last increase, the start of the tenancy and the 52-week rule. We show when a review is due, why that date applies, and what to check first: too soon, documents missing, landlord not yet approved, or a figure that looks easy to contest.

Nothing is sent until the landlord says yes. When it is sent, the next allowed date is written back on the property. Selling the property does not start the 52 weeks again.