Four stories today, and three of them are the same story from different angles: government tightening its grip on property that sits idle, badly managed, or out of reach. Councils can now go after an empty home after six months instead of two years. Landlords get a hard look at five months of the Renters’ Rights Act, including a national register with real teeth. NRLA and the Energy Saving Trust say the 2030 MEES deadline needs more than good intentions. And a new first-time buyer scheme gets a Budget date.
Empty homes now trigger council action after six months, not two years
MHCLG announced reforms to Empty Dwelling Management Orders in a press release published 27 September: the eligibility threshold drops from two years' vacancy to six months, and the reforms “streamline the application process by removing evidential requirements relating to issues such as anti-social behaviour or community support for intervention.” Under an EDMO a council can take over management of a property for up to seven years while ownership stays with the owner. No minister is quoted in the release itself, so treat any framing you see elsewhere naming a particular Secretary of State as commentary, not government text.
The evidential change matters more than the headline figure. Under the old rules a council had to build a case that a long-empty property was causing genuine community harm before a tribunal would grant an order — a slow, resource-heavy process most authorities avoided unless a property was a real nuisance. Strip that requirement out and pair it with a six-month trigger, and an EDMO becomes a realistic tool against an ordinary probate property stuck in administration, or a renovation project that has stalled for entirely innocent reasons — funding gaps, a contractor who walked off site, a listed-building consent that took longer than expected.
Anyone sitting on a vacant property they intend to do up should treat six months as the real deadline now, not a soft target: get a schedule of works and a realistic programme in writing, and if it slips, tell the council proactively rather than waiting to be found. Buyers of long-empty properties should ask their conveyancer to check whether an EDMO has already been applied for or served, since it changes who is actually in control of the asset they are about to purchase.
Five months into the Renters’ Rights Act, the register is the story that actually bites
Tom Entwistle's review for LandlordZone pulls together the first hard data since commencement, and it does not match either camp's prediction. Paragon Bank's landlord survey found 69 per cent still expect a negative impact on their lettings business, down from 76 per cent before the Act took effect — sentiment easing, not collapsing. Zoopla's figures show rental supply down 3 per cent year-on-year but enquiries at their highest in almost two years, with 4–5 per cent rent growth expected by December. Ministry of Justice data for April–June 2026 shows landlord possession claims up 6 per cent on the same quarter last year, and accelerated claims specifically up 16 per cent — the MoJ itself says it “cannot yet tell how much of the movement in the figures is down to the Act.”
The detail worth building a compliance calendar around is the new Private Rented Sector property registration scheme: it launches 15 December 2026, starting in the West Midlands before rolling out region by region, costs £65 per property per year, and carries penalties of up to £40,000 for serious or repeated non-compliance. That is not a filing-cabinet fee. It is a live, searchable record tied to every rented property, and a landlord who has let their gas safety certificate, EPC or deposit protection lapse will find that a register entry makes the gap far easier for a council or a tenant's solicitor to spot than it ever was before.
Landlords outside the West Midlands have a few months before their region is called, not a reprieve — use that time to get every certificate current and every record digitised so registration on day one is a formality rather than a scramble. Anyone whose EPC is close to expiry or borderline on rating should get it renewed now rather than after their region goes live.
NRLA and the Energy Saving Trust want proof the 2030 MEES deadline is more than a date on a page
NRLA and Energy Saving Trust, backed by twelve other housing, energy and finance bodies, published a joint briefing setting out five conditions for the 2030 minimum energy efficiency standard to actually work, reported by Landlord Today: enough trained installers, accessible landlord finance, a functioning Warm Homes Agency giving impartial advice, properly resourced council enforcement, and protection for vulnerable tenants during works. NRLA chief executive Ben Beadle put it plainly: “2030 may sound some way off, but upgrading homes on the scale now needed requires landlords, installers, lenders, local authorities and tenants to start preparing now.”
Read between the asks and the coalition is really saying one thing: government has set a deadline without yet proving the delivery system can take the load. That is the same pattern that produced installer bottlenecks and grant-scheme queues every time a retrofit incentive has landed with a hard cut-off, and a trade body naming it publicly, five years ahead of the deadline, is a genuine signal rather than routine lobbying.
Landlords should not wait for a finalised MEES rulebook before commissioning a retrofit assessment — the briefing's own warning is that everyone leaving it late creates the installer bottleneck it is trying to head off. Getting a PAS 2035 assessment done this year, while capacity is still available and before the 2030 rush, is the practical response to a warning like this, not a reason to wait for more certainty.
A 2.5 per cent deposit scheme gets a Budget date, and a warning attached
The government confirmed in a gov.uk announcement that full detail of the “Your First Home” scheme — a 2.5 per cent buyer deposit paired with a 20 per cent government-backed equity loan, initially interest-free, for first-time buyers of new-build homes in England — will be set out at the Budget on 28 October, as Today’s Conveyancer reports. On a £250,000 new-build, that is a £6,250 deposit. NatWest's Solange Chamberlain welcomed it; New Homes Quality Board chief executive Emma Toms said new-build standards “must” stay high alongside the support; reallymoving's Rob Houghton went further, warning that concentrating buying power into one part of the market “could artificially inflate prices,” echoing what happened under Help to Buy.
A 2.5 per cent deposit is a genuinely small stake in a large asset, and that cuts both ways for a first-time buyer. It gets more people into a first home sooner, which is the point. It also means a buyer who skips a proper pre-completion inspection on a new-build and later discovers a Part L airtightness shortfall, a snagging list the developer will not action, or a drainage defect has almost no equity cushion to absorb the cost — their skin in the game is 2.5 per cent, but the bill for a serious defect does not scale down to match it.
Anyone planning to use this scheme once details land in October should budget for an independent new-build snagging inspection or Building Survey before completion as a fixed cost of the purchase, not an optional extra, precisely because the low deposit leaves so little room to absorb a defect discovered afterwards.
What I’d actually do
- Sitting on a vacant property mid-renovation? Get a realistic works programme in writing and tell your council proactively if it slips — six months is now the operative deadline, not two years.
- Buying a long-empty property? Ask your conveyancer to check for an existing or pending EDMO before exchange.
- Letting property anywhere in England? Get every certificate — gas safety, EPC, deposit protection — current now, ahead of the PRS register reaching your region from 15 December.
- Landlord waiting on the final MEES rulebook? Commission a PAS 2035 retrofit assessment this year rather than waiting; the trade bodies themselves are warning that everyone leaving it late creates the 2030 bottleneck.
- Planning to use the Your First Home scheme from October? Budget for an independent snagging inspection or Building Survey before completion — a 2.5 per cent deposit leaves almost no room to absorb a defect found afterwards.
Whether it’s a pre-completion snagging inspection, a PAS 2035 retrofit assessment, or an EPC ahead of the new PRS register, the practice covers all of it across the South East. Retrofit assessments, EPCs and Building Surveys — or get in touch to talk through your situation.
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 28 September 2026.