Three stories today share a pattern rather than a subject: rules and demand moving faster than the machinery built to process either. Plug-in solar panels became legal to buy and use across Great Britain on Thursday, with no equivalent process yet for the landlord-consent question that follows about five minutes later; rent tribunal challenges have very nearly quadrupled in the four months since the Renters’ Rights Act took effect, without a single new line of legislation on rent levels themselves; and conveyancing solicitors are warning that title investigation, the one stage of a sale that genuinely cannot be rushed, is about to become the slowest link in a chain moving faster everywhere else. None of it needed a minister to announce anything today. It is what happens when policy and demand outrun the capacity built to enforce or process either.
Plug-in solar is legal from Thursday — and your tenancy agreement has nothing to say about it
DESNZ’s regulatory amendment legalising plug-in, or ‘balcony’, solar came into force on 27 August, the end point of a process that started with a March announcement, ran through a consultation closing 30 June, and produced a government response and interim product specification on 16 July. As the department’s consultation and regulatory amendment page confirms, a compliant kit can now be plugged directly into an ordinary household socket — no electrician, no permitted development application — up to a limit of 800W at the inverter, one device per household under the amended G98 grid-connection rules, with a Distribution Network Operator notification required within 28 days. DESNZ cites potential savings of up to £110 a year and roughly a fifth of an average home’s electricity use covered.
What the specification does not do is create any process for the moment a tenant asks a landlord to say yes. The guidance is explicit that the new electrical rules do not override a tenancy agreement, a lease, planning permission or listed building consent — but almost no tenancy agreement written before this week mentions plug-in solar, because the product was not legally available when it was drafted. That leaves landlords making a case-by-case call on something touching the fixed wiring, the building’s insurance, and in some cases fire safety: the specification bars installation on certain combustible cladding and timber elements pending remediation, a detail a tenant asking permission is unlikely to have checked first. It is well-tested consumer technology arriving several steps ahead of the paperwork meant to govern who fits it where.
Landlords should add a plug-in solar clause to tenancy agreements now, rather than drafting one under pressure after the first request lands, and should check any proposed kit against the Energy Networks Association’s registration list before agreeing. Leaseholders should assume freeholder consent is still required regardless of the new legality, and anyone in a property with external wall insulation or cladding fitted since 2018 should ask a professional whether the fixing point is one of the restricted surfaces before saying yes.
Rent tribunal challenges have nearly quadrupled — the Renters’ Rights Act’s power shift, in numbers
Analysis by Hamptons, reported by Property Industry Eye on 28 August, found the First-tier Tribunal made 166 market-rent decisions in July, against 44 in the same month last year — a monthly average that has climbed from 42 before May, when the Renters’ Rights Act’s rent-increase reforms took effect, to 109 in May and 129 in June. Tenants brought 60 per cent of July’s cases, and the tribunal is resolving them faster too: 80 days on average in July, against 172 in April. Hamptons analyst David Fell said “as awareness grows, we will continue to see these numbers increase”; Paul Rooke of Mayo Wynne Baxter called the data “a clear indication that the Renters’ Rights Act has shifted the balance of power towards tenants”.
None of this required rent controls, which Angela Rayner ruled out again only two days ago. Abolishing Section 21 removed the main reason a tenant would swallow a rent increase rather than challenge it — there is no longer a ‘no fault’ eviction waiting on the other side of a dispute — and a tribunal turning decisions around in under three months, instead of nearly six, makes a challenge worth a tenant’s time in a way it was not a year ago. A faster, more-used tribunal is a real check on rent increases without a line of new legislation on rent levels themselves, worth remembering next time rent control gets framed as the only lever available.
Serve a Section 13 increase with the evidence you would need at tribunal already assembled — at least three genuinely comparable local lettings, not a round-number guess — because the odds a tenant refers it, and the odds you have to defend it within weeks rather than months, have both risen sharply this year.
Sales are getting faster; conveyancing isn’t, and title checks are why
Rightmove’s figures, cited in a piece for Today’s Conveyancer on 28 August by ntitle co-founder Nicola Ashley, show the average time to find a buyer falling from 81 days at the start of 2026 to 62 days by June. Ashley’s argument is that this compresses everyone’s expectations for the stages that follow, and title investigation — checking ownership, what is registered against a property, and what a buyer is really acquiring — cannot be compressed the same way without the check suffering. Her recommendation is that firms stop measuring ‘done’ and start measuring ‘buyer-ready’: a title report that has already been reviewed and is immediately actionable, not one that has simply cleared a queue.
I would go further than Ashley’s framing. A full building survey is the other stage in this chain that cannot be rushed for the same reason — a structural opinion delivered under time pressure is worth less than the paper it is printed on — and the two run on separate clocks that rarely get coordinated. A buyer whose offer was accepted nine weeks faster than expected a year ago is entitled to assume the rest moves just as quickly, and the survey and the title check are both places that assumption meets reality first.
Instruct your surveyor the day an offer is accepted, not after searches come back — running the survey and the conveyancer’s title investigation in parallel, rather than in sequence, is the one lever a buyer actually controls against a queue neither the surveyor nor the conveyancer set.
What I’d actually do
- Letting a property? Add a plug-in solar clause to your tenancy agreement before the first request arrives, and check any kit against the ENA’s registration list.
- Increasing a tenant’s rent? Assemble your comparable evidence before you serve the Section 13 notice, not after a tribunal referral lands.
- Buying or selling? Instruct your surveyor the moment an offer is accepted so it runs alongside the conveyancer’s title investigation, not after it.
If today’s notes have you weighing a tenancy clause, a rent review or the timing of a survey, the practice covers full building surveys and PAS 2035 retrofit assessments 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 29 August 2026.