“No pets” used to be a sentence, not a starting point for a conversation. Since 1 May 2026, it isn’t one any more. For most private tenants in England, a blanket ban has stopped working as a legal answer: a tenant has a statutory right to ask, the landlord has to consider the particular request, and consent cannot be unreasonably refused.
That is not the same thing as a right to move an animal in regardless of what the landlord says. Permission is still required, there are circumstances in which refusal can be reasonable, and missing the response deadline does not automatically create consent. What has changed is the decision the landlord has to make. “I don’t allow pets” is no longer enough on its own.
This article covers England, where the right sits in a specific new provision of the Housing Act 1988 inserted by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Social-housing assured tenancies are excluded from this particular regime, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland do not currently operate the same English 28-day process.
The request has to be made properly, and answered properly
The new right operates as an implied term of assured tenancies within England’s reformed private-rented-sector regime. In practical terms, that means the protection comes from the law rather than from the wording the landlord chose for the tenancy agreement. An existing clause saying simply that pets are prohibited cannot, by itself, dispose of a request without the landlord considering whether refusal is reasonable.
Most existing private assured shorthold tenancies within the new system moved into assured periodic tenancies on 1 May 2026, so the right is not limited to people who have signed a new agreement since the reforms began. A prospective tenant can of course ask whether a pet will be accepted before taking a property, but the formal statutory process described here — including the 28-day response duty — is tied to the assured tenancy itself.
The tenant has to make the request in writing and describe the animal for which permission is sought. The legislation does not require a lengthy application, but identifying the actual pet gives the landlord something concrete to consider. Saying that you want permission for a five-year-old, house-trained Labrador is more useful than asking generally whether “pets” are allowed.
There is a useful distinction hidden in the wording of the law. A tenant is treated as keeping a pet where they allow the animal to live at the property, whether or not they technically own it. Regularly moving a partner’s dog into the home, for example, is not necessarily outside the rules simply because somebody else’s name appears on the veterinary records. At the same time, the new statutory right does not prevent a tenancy agreement dealing with animals that merely visit rather than live at the property.
Section 11 of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 sets out the new process. Ordinarily, the landlord has 28 days after receiving the written request to give or refuse consent in writing.
That deadline is not completely inflexible. If the landlord reasonably needs more information about the animal and asks for it within the relevant period, the eventual decision can be delayed. Once the tenant supplies the information, the landlord gets the longer of the time remaining under the original deadline or seven days from receiving the additional information. If a tenant does not provide information that was reasonably requested in order to decide the application, the landlord does not have to reach the decision without it.
Leasehold property creates another important variation. A landlord may own the flat but themselves be bound by a superior lease requiring permission from a freeholder or another superior landlord. If they apply for that permission within the original 28-day period, their own response can be delayed until seven days after the superior landlord replies. The tenant and landlord can also agree between themselves to extend the deadline.
What the landlord cannot safely do is ignore the request. But silence does not mean automatic consent. If 28 days pass without the required written response, the landlord has failed to comply with the statutory obligation and that failure can be challenged; it does not give the tenant a safe basis for simply moving the animal in. The legislation allows a court dealing with a breach of the implied term to order the landlord to perform the obligation.
That distinction matters because the new right is a right to have the request considered properly, not a mechanism by which permission appears automatically when the landlord misses a date.
What counts as a good enough reason to say no
A refusal has to be reasonable in the circumstances. The legislation deliberately avoids trying to produce an exhaustive catalogue of every animal, building and household combination that might justify a yes or a no.
One of the clearest situations is written directly into the law. If the property is leasehold and allowing the animal would put the landlord in breach of an agreement with a superior landlord, refusing consent can be reasonable. Where the superior lease does not impose an absolute ban but instead says consent must be obtained, the landlord cannot necessarily stop there: they are expected to take reasonable steps to obtain that consent.
The current government guidance for tenants who want a pet gives other examples of circumstances that may make refusal reasonable. The property might genuinely be too small for the particular animal or for the number of animals proposed; another person living in the home might have a relevant allergy; or the animal itself may be unlawful to own.
Those examples are useful because they show what the test is trying to achieve. The question is not whether the landlord likes animals. It is whether there is something about this animal, this home or this household that gives the landlord a reasonable basis for refusing it.
The government’s examples of usually unreasonable refusal make the same point from the other direction. A landlord simply disliking pets, having had a previous tenant whose animal caused damage, worrying in general that animals might damage properties or thinking a pet could make the property less attractive to future renters will not normally be enough on their own.
That is the practical change introduced in 2026. A landlord can still say no, but the decision has moved from a portfolio-wide preference to an individual assessment. “We never allow dogs” is very different from “the superior lease prohibits dogs” or “this particular property cannot reasonably accommodate the animal being proposed”.
For a tenant who has been refused, that is also a more useful way to assess the answer than assuming the new law created an unconditional right to a pet. It did not. It created a right not to be refused unreasonably.
What a landlord can — and cannot — make you pay
This part of the reform is easy to get wrong because earlier versions of the legislation proposed something different.
At one stage, the proposed system would have allowed landlords to require tenants to arrange pet-damage insurance as a condition of consent. That did not survive into the final regime. A landlord cannot now make buying a particular insurance product the price of getting permission for the animal.
The wider reason is found in the Tenant Fees Act regime. Its official explanatory notes explain that landlords and letting agents cannot generally require tenants to enter into insurance or other third-party service contracts as a condition of a tenancy outside the permitted-payment rules.
A separate “pet deposit” does not create a way around the existing tenancy-deposit cap either. The ordinary deposit remains subject to the statutory maximum — normally five weeks’ rent where annual rent is below £50,000 and six weeks where it is £50,000 or more but below £100,000. Approving an animal does not create another pot of security money that can simply be added on top.
Rent is slightly different and should not be confused with a pet fee. Consent to a pet does not itself create a separate entitlement to attach a monthly pet charge to an existing tenancy, but rent is governed by its own statutory rules. Where a landlord wants to increase the rent of an assured periodic tenancy, the normal rent-increase process, notice requirements and tenant challenge rights apply. Pet approval is not a shortcut around that regime.
For a tenant, the important distinction is therefore between three things that can easily be blurred together: the lawful tenancy deposit, the rent itself and an additional fee or compulsory product demanded specifically because of the pet. They are not legally interchangeable.
Approval doesn’t mean a blank cheque
Getting permission for an animal does not suspend the rest of the tenancy or make the landlord responsible for whatever the pet subsequently does.
If the animal causes genuine damage beyond fair wear and tear, the normal rules still apply. A landlord may seek the reasonable cost of putting that damage right, including through the tenancy deposit where appropriate. If there is suitable insurance that the tenant chose to arrange voluntarily, a claim may potentially be made under that policy as well, subject to its terms.
The distinction is between the risk that a pet might cause damage and damage that actually occurs. General anxiety that an animal could scratch a floor or damage a carpet is one of the reasons a blanket refusal will usually struggle to meet the new test. If the animal actually does damage the floor or carpet, however, the tenant remains responsible in the ordinary way.
Consent should also be understood in relation to the animal described in the request. If permission was given for one cat and the tenant later wants to bring in another animal, the new pet needs to be raised with the landlord rather than assuming the first consent opened the door permanently to any number or type of pets.
There is protection on the other side too. Once the landlord has consented to the animal, current government guidance says they cannot simply change their mind later and rewrite the agreement to remove that permission. Actual nuisance, damage or another tenancy breach can still be dealt with through the usual tenancy rules, but the consent itself is not supposed to disappear merely because the landlord has reconsidered their preference.
Assistance animals are a different, stronger issue
An assistance animal connected to a disability should not be reduced to an ordinary argument about whether the landlord likes pets.
The 2026 pet-request provisions sit alongside, rather than replace, the Equality Act 2010. Landlords and those managing rented premises can have separate duties towards disabled people, including duties concerning reasonable adjustments and discrimination. Refusing an animal that a tenant needs because of a disability can therefore raise questions considerably more serious than whether an ordinary pet refusal was reasonable.
The government’s own pet guidance says that where the landlord knows a tenant needs an assistance animal, such as a guide dog, refusal would usually be unreasonable. But the broader disability-law position depends on the circumstances and should be considered separately where it applies.
The relevant duties concerning let premises are found in section 36 of the Equality Act 2010. A tenant facing a dispute about an assistance animal should therefore avoid assuming that the 28-day pet process represents the full extent of their legal protection.
What to actually do if you’re refused
A refusal should tell you enough to understand why the landlord believes saying no is reasonable.
There is a significant difference between “I don’t allow pets”, “I’ve had trouble with dogs before” and an explanation that the superior lease prohibits the proposed animal, permission has been sought and refused, or a particular feature of the property makes the animal unsuitable.
If the reason looks generic, ask for clarification in writing rather than arguing immediately about the conclusion. Keep your original request, the date it was sent, any further information the landlord asked for, your response and the eventual decision. If a superior landlord was involved, it may also be relevant to ask what permission was required and what steps were actually taken to obtain it.
The same record matters if the landlord simply fails to answer. Once the statutory deadline has passed, write again referring to the original request and the date on which it was made. Do not treat the absence of a reply as permission and move the animal in.
Where a landlord unreasonably refuses consent or fails to perform the statutory obligation, the issue can ultimately be taken to court. The legislation gives the court power to order specific performance of the implied tenancy term, which means this is more than a government request that landlords behave reasonably.
A dedicated Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman is intended to provide a more accessible redress route for private-rental disputes in future, but it is not yet an operational alternative for a tenant dealing with a pet refusal in September 2026. Until that changes, it should not be presented as somewhere a tenant can already take the case.
That makes the first written response to a refusal particularly worthwhile. Ask the landlord what is specific about the property, animal or household that makes consent unreasonable. A landlord who can answer that question clearly may have a defensible decision. One who can only repeat “no pets” may not have applied the statutory test at all.
England has changed first — but the rest of the UK is not static
The statutory right described above is an English private-rented-sector reform. Similar questions arise elsewhere in the UK, but the legal route is not currently the same.
Wales has not introduced an equivalent statutory 28-day right. However, Welsh Government guidance does not treat every contractual pet prohibition as automatically decisive either. Its Renting Homes guidance for tenants explains that additional terms concerning pets must comply with consumer-law fairness requirements, and a pet term should enable the contract-holder to ask for permission rather than allowing consent to be refused unreasonably.
Scotland is further along a legislative path of its own. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 provides for a future statutory right for private tenants to make a written request to keep a pet, with landlords unable to refuse unreasonably. But the Scottish provisions have not yet been brought into force, and as of September 2026 no commencement date has been set. The Scottish Government’s current tenant-rights guidance explains both the existing position and the reform still waiting to commence.
Northern Ireland has not introduced England’s statutory pet-request process. The tenancy agreement therefore remains particularly important there, alongside any other contractual or discrimination rights that apply to the individual circumstances.
So a tenant in Manchester, Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast can ask the same everyday question — “can my landlord refuse my pet?” — without yet having the same legal answer.
What the new right actually changes
The most important thing about the 2026 reform is not that landlords have lost the ability to refuse pets. They haven’t.
What has changed is the quality of the answer they have to give.
For the assured private tenancies covered by the reform, a tenant now has a defined statutory process: make a written request for the animal that is intended to live at the property, provide reasonable additional information if it is needed, and require the landlord to consider the request on its own circumstances. A landlord can still refuse where there is a defensible reason, but personal preference, an unexamined blanket policy or memories of somebody else’s badly behaved pet are no longer enough on their own.
If the landlord fails to respond, the tenant gains an enforceable complaint — not automatic permission. If the landlord refuses, the question becomes whether that refusal can genuinely be called reasonable when measured against the particular animal, property and household.
That is a narrower right than “tenants can have pets”, but a considerably stronger one than the old position in which “no pets” could end the conversation before it began.
This article provides general property information, not legal, financial, surveying or other professional advice for your individual circumstances. Property disputes and regulatory issues can depend on the facts, documents, location and applicable law. If significant money, property or legal rights are at risk, or you are considering an irreversible course of action, take appropriate professional advice before proceeding.
