Right to rent 2026: Home Office consults on new rules to protect expat tenants from discrimination

What the Home Office is actually changing

The consultation, published on 15 April 2026, is not a new law. It is a revised version of the statutory code of practice on avoiding unlawful discrimination during right-to-rent checks, issued under section 33 of the Immigration Act 2014 and approved by the Secretary of State. The underlying scheme is unchanged. Landlords in England still have to check that every prospective adult tenant has the right to rent, and they are still liable for a civil penalty if they rent to someone without lawful status and cannot show they did the check properly.

What is new is the detail of how landlords are expected to behave while doing those checks. The revised code reflects the shift from physical biometric residence permits to eVisas, the introduction of certified digital identity verification services, and the increased use of automated onboarding in letting agency software. It also tightens the guidance on fair letting practice, including how to handle applicants without a passport and applicants whose immigration status is still being decided.

The consultation closes at 11:59pm on 29 April 2026. After that, the Home Office will finalise the text and publish it alongside a separate civil penalty code for landlords. The revised code applies to residential tenancy agreements commencing on or after 1 October 2026, and to repeat checks carried out on or after that date. Tenancies signed before 1 October 2026 continue to be governed by the existing code.

Why this matters to international tenants

For people relocating to the UK, the right-to-rent check is usually the first real encounter with the immigration system after arrival. You will face it before you sign a lease, often before a letting agent will even book a viewing. In practice, it is the moment when the paperwork you carefully collected for your visa application gets examined by someone whose profession is property, not immigration. That mismatch is where most discrimination happens, and it is exactly what the code is trying to address.

The draft is candid about the risk. It says landlords must not make assumptions about a tenant’s right to rent on the basis of their colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, accent, or how long they have been in the UK. It says landlords must not treat time-limited visa holders less favourably once they have proven their initial and ongoing right to rent. And it says — for the first time with this much clarity — that algorithmic onboarding tools must not be allowed to introduce or perpetuate discriminatory outcomes, even unintentionally.

If you are an expat, the practical effect is that the rules landlords are told to follow are slightly friendlier to you than they were. If you are a landlord or a tenant who rents on, the practical effect is that the standards you will be judged against in a county court discrimination claim are slightly higher. Both groups need to understand what changes in October.

The three ways a right-to-rent check can be done

The revised code keeps the three existing methods for establishing a statutory excuse against a civil penalty. It is important to understand the options, because part of the new anti-discrimination guidance is that landlords cannot insist on a particular method when the tenant has a valid alternative.

The three methods are: a check using a certified digital verification service provider, a Home Office online check using a share code from the tenant’s eVisa, or a manual documents-based check using a combination from List A or List B of the Landlord’s Guide. Each produces a statutory excuse if carried out correctly, but which one is available depends on what immigration documents you hold.

• Digital verification service (DVS). Used for British and Irish citizens who choose to verify their identity digitally through a certified provider under the Digital Identity and Attributes Framework. Optional for British and Irish nationals, who can always fall back on a manual passport check if they prefer.
• Home Office online service. The only acceptable method for most visa holders with an eVisa. The tenant generates a nine-character share code beginning with the letter “R”, which the landlord enters alongside the tenant’s date of birth to see their right-to-rent status. Codes starting with W or S are for other services and cannot be used.
• Manual documents check. Used by tenants who cannot create a UKVI account, or who hold acceptable physical documents from List A or List B. Includes British passports, Irish passports, certificates of naturalisation, and the various List A Group 2 document combinations.

The code’s starting principle is that none of these methods can be used to treat a tenant more or less favourably than another. A landlord cannot, for example, refuse to consider you because you “only” have an eVisa and no physical card. Nor can a landlord refuse a British citizen who wants to show their passport rather than use a digital verification service.

The shift to eVisas is now central to the code

Almost every migrant who held a biometric residence permit (BRP) has by now moved to an eVisa. The eVisa is not a new immigration status; it is a digital record of an existing status held in a UKVI account. For right-to-rent purposes, the practical consequence is that most non-UK, non-Irish tenants now prove their status by generating a share code rather than handing over a physical document.

The revised code makes three points about this that are worth reading carefully. First, moving from a physical document to an eVisa does not change your immigration status or the conditions attached to your leave. A landlord who treats an eVisa holder as somehow more precarious than a BRP holder is misreading the system. Second, share codes expire after 90 days, and they can only be used for the purpose they were generated for. If your landlord asks for a new one at the start of a repeat check, that is a legitimate request, not harassment. Third, tenants who cannot use the online service — for reasons of age, accessibility, or account issues — must be offered a manual check instead. The Home Office is clear that forcing everyone down the digital route is not lawful.

What the code says counts as discrimination

The Equality Act 2010 protects tenants from discrimination on nine grounds: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. The right-to-rent code focuses specifically on race, because that is where letting practices under an immigration scheme are most likely to go wrong, but landlords remain liable on any of the nine grounds.

The code identifies three categories of unlawful behaviour. It is worth reading each in the context of a real viewing or online enquiry.

Direct discrimination

This is treating someone worse because of a protected characteristic. In a right-to-rent context, the textbook examples are rejecting applicants who lack British citizenship, refusing to consider any “international” tenants, or running checks only on people the landlord believes are not British based on appearance, name, or accent. It is also direct discrimination to treat someone worse because they are connected to a person with a protected characteristic. Unless there is a statutory exception, direct discrimination cannot be defended.

Indirect discrimination

This is where a landlord applies a rule that looks neutral but disadvantages a group with a protected characteristic. The draft code uses two illustrative examples. Requiring all tenants to have been resident in the UK for five years or more puts recent migrants at a disadvantage, even if they have a valid right to rent. Restricting a property to members of a specific profession in which certain ethnic groups are under-represented does the same. Indirect discrimination is unlawful unless the landlord can show the rule is objectively justifiable, which in practice is a high bar.

Harassment and victimisation

Harassment is unwanted conduct connected to a protected characteristic that violates a tenant’s dignity or creates a hostile or degrading environment. Victimisation is penalising someone because they have complained about discrimination, given evidence, or are suspected of intending to. Both are specifically called out in the code because the right-to-rent check creates a power imbalance that is easy to misuse.

One important point the revised code reinforces: if a landlord uses a letting agent, the landlord can still be liable for the agent’s discrimination unless they can show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it. That is a shift in practice from “the agent did it” to “you are responsible for supervising your agent.”

The List A Group 2 protection — what it means for you

List A of the Landlord’s Guide to right-to-rent checks sets out acceptable documents that prove an unlimited right to rent. Group 1 is a single document, usually a British or Irish passport or a certificate of naturalisation. Group 2 is a combination of two documents for applicants without a passport — typically a UK driving licence together with a full UK birth certificate, but there are several other valid pairings.

The revised code says something important about Group 2: a landlord must not treat a tenant less favourably because they are using a combination rather than a single passport. There should be no further questions about immigration status once a valid combination is accepted. This matters because in practice, many letting agents default to asking for a passport and treat the absence of one as a red flag. The code is explicit that this is unlawful where the tenant has produced a valid List A Group 2 combination.

Source: Landlord’s guide to right to rent checks, Home Office, March 2026 update.

If your immigration case is still open

One of the most common situations for expats is having an application, administrative review, or appeal in progress when a tenancy starts. The revised code, like the existing one, is clear that you do not lose your right to rent just because the paperwork has not caught up.

If you applied to extend your permission before your previous leave expired, you keep any right to rent you had while the application and any connected review or appeal is outstanding. Your digital profile may not yet reflect the new state of play, though. That is what the Landlord Checking Service (LCS) is for. Your landlord submits a form with your Home Office reference number; the service returns a yes or no within two working days, along with a unique reference number that forms the basis of the landlord’s statutory excuse.

Two points worth knowing. The LCS reply does not disclose the details of your immigration status or any applications. Your landlord is told whether you have the right to rent, not the story behind it. And the LCS is for landlords and letting agents only — tenants cannot submit requests themselves. If you are running into problems with your digital profile, the UKVI Resolution Centre is the route for individual support, and eVisa biographical errors are handled through the separate “Report an error” service.

What a fair letting practice looks like under the new code

The revised code sets out several behaviours landlords should and should not adopt. Most of them are commonsense; a few are sharper than in previous versions. The direction of travel is towards consistency: every prospective tenant, including those the landlord assumes are probably British, should be treated the same way at the same stage of the process.

What landlords should do

• Run the right-to-rent check on every prospective tenant at the same stage of the application, not just on those who look or sound like migrants.
• State up front, in adverts and information packs, that checks will be needed so no applicant is caught unaware.
• Keep offers open for a reasonable period if an applicant needs time to produce documents or gather a List A Group 2 combination.
• Contact the Landlord Checking Service where someone has an open application rather than refusing them outright.
• Audit automated onboarding tools and letting agency software to check that filters, scoring rules, or document-parsing algorithms are not disadvantaging particular groups.

What landlords should not do

• Make assumptions about immigration status on the basis of colour, nationality, ethnicity, accent, or time lived in the UK.
• Treat time-limited visa holders less favourably than British or settled tenants, once the initial check is complete.
• Insist on digital identity verification for a British or Irish citizen who wants to present a passport, or refuse a manual check for someone who cannot use the online service.
• Favour applicants who produce a passport over those who produce a valid List A Group 2 combination.
• Publish adverts that indicate an intention to discriminate, or instruct agents, referencers, or third-party contractors to discriminate on their behalf.

How to complain if you think you were discriminated against

A tenant who believes they have been discriminated against, directly or indirectly, can bring a complaint before a county court under the Equality Act 2010. The remedy is typically financial compensation and, in some cases, a declaration that the landlord’s practice was unlawful. The process is not trivial, but it is more accessible than people often assume.

Free help is available from the Equality Advisory Support Service (EASS), a government-funded service that advises on discrimination and human rights issues. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) cannot represent individuals in ordinary county court cases, but it can take enforcement action against landlords who publish discriminatory adverts, or who instruct or induce others to discriminate. That enforcement power matters: a single EHRC action can clean up a local lettings market faster than a series of individual claims.

If you are an expat and you think you have been discriminated against at the right-to-rent stage, the other route worth knowing is to complain to the letting agent’s redress scheme. By law, every letting agent in England must belong to one of two government-approved schemes: The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme. Their decisions are not binding in the way a court judgment is, but they can order compensation and, over time, they build a public record of problematic agents.

What happens between now and October

The consultation closes on 29 April 2026, which is five days from publication of this article. The Home Office will then consider the responses, revise the text if necessary, and publish the final version of the code in time for the 1 October 2026 commencement date. Separately, an updated civil penalty code for landlords — governing how fines are calculated when a landlord fails to do a check — is expected to land around the same time.

For landlords, the main action between now and October is reviewing internal processes: advert copy, application forms, onboarding software, training for agents, and contracts with referencing providers. The higher the standard of consistency at the front door, the lower the risk of a discrimination claim at the back.

For tenants — and particularly for expats starting new tenancies this autumn — the main action is simpler: understand what a compliant right-to-rent check looks like, keep your share code and documents ready, and trust that if something feels off, it probably is. The revised code does not give you a new right; it clarifies how the rights you already have under the Equality Act apply to a process that affects almost everyone who moves to England from abroad.

For the wider sector, the most interesting development is the explicit reference to automated onboarding. This is the first time a right-to-rent code has said, in terms, that algorithms must not introduce or perpetuate discriminatory outcomes. How that is tested in practice — by tenants, courts, and the EHRC — will shape how letting agency software is built for the rest of the decade.