Four stories today, and three of them are really about the same thing: the gap between what a rule says on paper and what actually happens when it meets a real landlord, a real council or a real appeal. A Renters’ Rights notice turns out to carry a longer tail than most landlords have been told, new research shows Article 4 status is a weaker predictor of an HMO appeal than which borough you’re in, and a maintenance-value study puts a hard number on what neglect costs a South East landlord. Add a Stoke-on-Trent prosecution that shows what heritage enforcement looks like in practice, and the theme for the week is consequences, not new rules.
The re-let ban’s real length is sixteen months, not twelve
As Property118 explains, the restricted period that follows a landlord using Ground 1A (possession to sell) under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 begins on the day the notice is served, not the day the tenant leaves or a court makes an order — that is the effect of section 16M(4) of the Housing Act 1988, as inserted by the 2025 Act. The restriction then runs for twelve months from the earliest date the notice specifies for court proceedings, and since a Ground 1A notice needs a minimum four months’ notice, the real exposure from the day the notice goes in the post is closer to sixteen months. Crucially, the piece notes this attaches to the act of serving the notice itself: withdraw it, and the restriction still runs its course. Breaching it is a criminal offence or a civil penalty of up to £40,000, with lesser failures fined up to £7,000 and rent repayment orders able to claw back up to two years of rent.
My read: this is a trap for exactly the landlord trying to do things properly — serving Ground 1A well in advance to give a tenant fair warning, then having circumstances change (a buyer falls through, they decide to let again after all) and assuming that once the tenant is out, the property is theirs to do with as they please. It isn’t, for the best part of a year and a half. It is also a trap for advisers: a conveyancer handling a sale where possession was obtained this way, who doesn’t flag the restricted period, leaves a client thinking they have optionality that no longer exists.
If you are serving, or about to serve, a Ground 1A notice, log the exact service date and treat the property as off the letting market for sixteen months from that day, not from completion of the sale. If you are advising on a purchase where the seller obtained vacant possession this way, check the notice date before assuming any fallback letting plan is available to the new owner either.
Article 4 doesn’t decide your HMO appeal — the council does
LandlordZone reports on research from planning consultancy PlanningLens, which examined almost 700 HMO planning appeals across 83 councils. Appellants in Article 4 areas won 21 per cent of the time against 38 per cent in areas without a direction — but the gap between individual boroughs dwarfs that split. In London, appellants won just 16 per cent of appeals against 42 per cent outside the capital, and within London’s own Article 4 boroughs the win rate fell further, to 8 per cent. Barking & Dagenham refuses 94 per cent of HMO applications outright and has seen landlords win only one of fifteen appeals; Havering refuses 93 per cent, with landlords winning two of sixteen. PlanningLens founder Mark Broome is quoted saying “what predicts your odds is the council you’re in” rather than Article 4 status alone, and the research also found the median decision time has sat at around 56 days both before and after a direction is introduced — Article 4 changes whether you need permission at all, not how long a decision takes once you’ve applied.
My read: landlords and their agents tend to treat “is this an Article 4 area” as the whole of their planning due diligence and stop there. This data says that’s the wrong level of granularity. Two boroughs can both carry Article 4 directions and still have wildly different appeal cultures, and a council’s own refusal and appeal-success rates are a far better predictor of your odds than its Article 4 status alone.
Before buying a property for HMO conversion, or lodging an appeal against a refused change of use, check what proportion of that specific council’s recent HMO applications and appeals were actually approved, not just whether the ward carries an Article 4 direction. It’s a short planning-register search that materially changes the risk profile of the purchase.
A neglected South East rental is now a five-figure mistake
LandlordZone reports on research from property manager Rushbrook, which modelled the capital-value impact of poor maintenance by applying a 10–15 per cent discount — the range it says a genuinely neglected property attracts against a well-kept comparable — to average landlord-owned property values by region. Against an England-wide average landlord property value of £201,145, that range tops out at a £30,172 loss; in London, where the average landlord property is valued at £390,625, the top of the range runs to £58,594. Rushbrook managing director Roma Sharma is quoted warning that cutting maintenance spend to manage rising costs “can end up costing considerably more in the long run.”
My read: this is the case for a proper condition survey, stated in numbers rather than professional opinion. On Rushbrook’s regional breakdown, the South East average landlord property value sits at £285,714, putting the top of that range at a loss north of £42,000 — well beyond what most landlords would ever spend catching up a maintenance backlog before it reached that stage. The research comes from a firm with an obvious interest in landlords spending more on upkeep, so treat the precise percentages as indicative rather than gospel, but the direction of travel isn’t controversial: deferred maintenance compounds, and it compounds fastest on the properties nobody has looked at properly in years.
If you haven’t had a rental property inspected by a surveyor since you bought it, or since your current tenancy began, that is the gap these numbers are pricing. A periodic condition survey costs a fraction of the value at risk and gives you a prioritised, budgeted list of works rather than a guess at what “poor maintenance” is quietly costing you.
Stoke’s heritage enforcement drive puts a number on ‘we will come after you’
LandlordZone reports that Stoke-on-Trent Council has prosecuted Nour House Ltd and its two directors after the London-based company let 179 High Street, a nineteenth-century building in Tunstall’s Tower Square Conservation Area, fall into disrepair and then ignored an enforcement notice requiring repairs. The company and directors pleaded guilty and were ordered to pay £8,386 in fines, costs and a victim surcharge. Cabinet member Councillor Finlay Gordon-McCusker is quoted: “If you own a historic building in Stoke-on-Trent and you walk away from it, we will come after you,” adding that the case sits within a heritage enforcement drive that has now taken action against more than 100 buildings across the city.
My read: this isn’t really a landlord story, it’s an ownership story — the same logic applies whether a building is tenanted, vacant, or a semi-derelict investment being quietly sat on. Conservation area enforcement used to be sporadic and reactive; a council that can point to action against 100-plus buildings has built an actual programme, with the resourcing and appetite to see a prosecution through the courts rather than settle for another warning letter.
If you own, or advise a client who owns, a building in a conservation area that has had any enforcement correspondence, however informal, treat it as live rather than filed away. A surveyor’s schedule of condition and a phased, budgeted repair plan is the practical answer to an enforcement notice — and it is far cheaper produced voluntarily than after a summons.
What I’d actually do
- Serving, or about to serve, a Ground 1A notice to sell? Note the exact service date and rule the property out of the letting market for the following sixteen months, not twelve.
- Buying for HMO conversion, or fighting a refusal? Check the specific council’s recent approval and appeal-success rates before assuming Article 4 status alone tells you the odds.
- Not had a rental property surveyed in a while? Get a condition survey done and budget the backlog before it turns into a five-figure value hit.
- Own a building in a conservation area with any enforcement history? Get ahead of it with a proper schedule of condition rather than waiting for a summons.
If today’s notes have you working out how long a re-let restriction really runs, what a council’s specific appeal record means for an HMO purchase, or what a condition survey would actually find before it becomes a five-figure problem, the practice covers full building surveys across the South East. 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 25 August 2026.