Two stories today read as the same story from opposite ends of the enforcement pipeline: a licensing scheme that slipped by three weeks with no legal mechanism to vary it, and an illegal eviction case that took nearly three years to reach sentencing but arrives with a dedicated taskforce attached for the next one. Layered on top, a consultation on who actually chairs a rent tribunal, and a lender quietly pricing EPC band into the cost of a buy-to-let mortgage. None of it is dramatic alone; together it reads as a system tightening its grip rather than easing off.
Croydon’s licensing delay is a warning, not a reprieve
Croydon Council has pushed back the launch of its additional licensing scheme and a selective licensing scheme covering 14 wards by 24 days, from 1 September to 25 September 2026, as LandlordZone reports. Council officers said they were not adequately prepared to implement on schedule; both schemes remain due to run through to 31 August 2031 regardless. Landlords and agents cannot submit applications until the new date. Richard Tacagni, managing director of London Property Licensing, said the underlying problem is structural rather than administrative: “The difficulty is that the legislation lacks any provision to vary a scheme designation,” warning the situation “risks causing confusion and uncertainty,” and recommending councils open applications three months ahead of any launch.
The gap Tacagni is pointing at matters more than the 24 days themselves. There is no clean legal route for a council to move a scheme’s start date, which means a delay like this happens through announcement and practical accommodation rather than any formal change to the underlying designation. If a tribunal ever wanted to take a hard line on the point, the safe assumption is not “the scheme now starts on the 25th” but “nobody has actually tested what happens to a landlord letting a covered property between the two dates.” I would not want to be that test case.
If you hold rental property inside a licensing area where the launch or renewal date has moved — Croydon or anywhere else — do not treat a delay as extra breathing room. Get your application drafted and ready to submit the moment the portal opens, and if you are unsure whether a property falls inside a scheme boundary, check with the council directly rather than relying on a press date.
Illegal eviction now comes with a taskforce attached
Lewisham Council has secured convictions against Mary and Peter Lewis, a married couple who illegally evicted a tenant who had rented a room in their property since 2017, as Landlord Today reports. In December 2023, after the tenant refused to leave without a proper legal process, the couple removed the locks, threatened him and put his belongings out on the street, where most of them were stolen; the tenant, who has a heart condition, was hospitalised overnight during the incident and remained without permanent housing more than two years later. Mary Lewis was fined £560 plus £3,000 compensation and £6,059 in costs; Peter Lewis was fined £240 plus £2,000 compensation and £6,059 in costs — £9,619 and £8,299 respectively, with £5,000 of that going directly to the tenant. Both retain the right to appeal, and Lewisham has announced a new Rogue Landlords Taskforce to pursue similar cases.
The gap between the incident and the sentencing — nearly three years — is itself the real story. That is roughly how slow enforcement against illegal eviction has been running, and it is exactly the kind of delay that makes self-help eviction look tempting to a landlord dealing with a difficult tenant: by the time a case reaches court, the immediate problem the landlord was trying to solve is long gone, win or lose. A dedicated taskforce is a bet that faster case-building closes that gap and makes the deterrent land while it still means something.
Section 21 is gone, so anyone tempted to skip the possession process because it now feels slower or less certain needs to weigh the numbers here properly: close to £10,000 in fines, costs and compensation, plus a criminal record, for a dispute that a Section 8 possession claim would have resolved lawfully, if more slowly. Whatever the provocation, go through the court every time, and keep a written record as you do.
Chartered surveyors, not judges, may soon run your rent tribunal
A consultation that opened in late August and runs to 25 September proposes amending the Practice Direction that governs who chairs Property Chamber hearings, making it easier for regional chartered surveyors — rather than regional or deputy regional judges — to chair rent-valuation cases, as LandlordZone reports. The case for the change rests on workload: with Section 21 gone, the tribunal’s expanding caseload under the Renters’ Rights Act is expected to be predominantly valuation work, and surveyors are considered well placed to run cases that turn on comparable rent rather than points of law. Government has separately committed 1,000 additional judges and tribunal members, £50 million for civil court modernisation and £5 million a year for housing legal aid, alongside a digital possession service due to roll out from the end of 2026 and be fully live by spring 2027 — though Landlord Action’s Paul Shamplina, predicting a further wave of claims before that lands, said this quarter’s figures could “go through the roof.”
I read this one as a chartered surveyor as much as a commentator. Handing chairmanship of valuation-heavy hearings to a surveyor rather than a judge is a sensible match of skill to task — the question in most of these cases genuinely is what a property would let for on the open market, not a legal argument — but it also means the quality of the evidence put in front of that panel matters more, not less. A surveyor chairing the case will be far less patient with a landlord’s cost-based justification for a rent increase and far more interested in whether you have brought three or four genuinely comparable local lettings to back it up.
If you are proposing a rent increase under Section 13 now or over the next year, build your comparables file before you serve notice, not after a tenant refers it — recent lettings of similar type, size and condition within a sensible radius, not a generic area report. That evidence will be read by someone qualified to spot a weak comparable immediately.
A quiet buy-to-let rate cut says more about EPC than about landlords
Paragon Bank has cut its fixed buy-to-let rates by 15 basis points, Landlord Today reports: two-year fixes on its Green Mortgage range now start from 3.40 per cent for single self-contained properties rated EPC A to C, against 3.45 per cent for the equivalent product on a D- or E-rated property, while five-year fixes start from 4.80 per cent against 4.85 per cent. HMO and multi-unit block products moved too, with two-year rates from 3.55 per cent and five-year from 4.95 per cent, both carrying a £299 application fee alongside cashback of £500 or £1,000 depending on term.
Five basis points either side of a rate cut will not decide anyone’s remortgage on its own, but the structure is the point, not the size of the gap. Paragon is not offering a green discount as a marketing gesture bolted onto the range — it is building EPC band directly into the base pricing of every fixed-rate product it sells, which means the C-to-D boundary at the heart of MEES is now showing up on a landlord’s mortgage statement, years ahead of the 2030 compliance deadline. Expect more lenders to follow the same structure as EPC C becomes the assumed baseline rather than the aspirational one.
If you are remortgaging a buy-to-let property sitting at D or E, run the numbers on the rate gap against the cost of the upgrade needed to cross into C. On a typical portfolio loan, a five-basis-point spread over a five-year fix is a real sum, and it is money you recover regardless of what happens to the 2030 deadline itself.
What I’d actually do
- Property inside a licensing area with a moved launch date? Get your application ready to submit the moment the portal opens — don’t treat a delay as extra time.
- Dealing with a difficult tenant? Never skip the court process, however slow it feels — the Lewisham case shows the alternative now costs close to £10,000 and a criminal record.
- Serving a Section 13 rent increase? Build a genuine comparables file before you serve notice — a surveyor-chaired tribunal will be quicker to spot a weak one.
- Remortgaging a buy-to-let at EPC D or E? Compare the rate premium against the upgrade cost — some lenders are now pricing the gap directly into the product.
Today’s notes touch licensing compliance, eviction risk and the evidence a rent tribunal now expects — the practice covers full building surveys across the South East, including condition and compliance work for landlord portfolios. Get in touch.
Small print. General commentary, not advice for your specific circumstances — regulations, schemes and deadlines change, and your property is not the average property. Sources linked were accurate when read on 2 September 2026.