What the Renters' Rights Act changed for your landlord policy

Some landlord insurance policies include a term that goes beyond who lives in the property. It requires you to refuse tenants who claim housing benefit or universal credit, or tenants with children, as a condition of cover.

Section 38 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 removes the force of that term. For a policy taken out or renewed in England from 1 May 2026, a clause of that kind has no effect. Your insurer cannot hold you to it, and you are not in breach of your policy for letting to a tenant it would previously have barred.

This applies in England only, and only to policies taken out or renewed from that date. A policy already running before 1 May 2026 keeps whatever terms it had until it comes up for renewal.

The clause itself may still sit in the wording your insurer sends you. Section 38 does not require the insurer to delete it, only to stop it from counting. It is worth asking your insurer directly whether your policy wording still includes a benefit-claimant or children exclusion, and if so, whether they can confirm in writing that it no longer applies to you.

Removing the effect of one term in a policy does not take away an insurer's general right to decide which risks it will accept. An insurer can still turn down a particular let, set the premium it judges right for that risk, and attach its own conditions to cover: referencing, the excess, what must be disclosed about the tenant or the tenancy. Section 38 reaches one clause, a term that bars benefit claimants or tenants with children. Everything else an insurer asks about a let at purchase remains theirs to ask.

Referencing still decides what rent guarantee will pay

Rent guarantee cover is built on referencing carried out before the tenancy starts: proof of income, employment checks, previous landlord references. An insurer can still require that referencing and can still decline a claim where it was not done, or not done to the standard the wording sets. None of that turns on a tenant's benefit status or whether they have children. It turns on whether the referencing the policy asked for actually took place, which you can read more about on the rent guarantee guide.

So the questions a landlord puts to an insurer at purchase have not become less important. What referencing does the insurer require before it will pay a claim. What happens if a tenant falls into arrears for a reason that referencing would never have caught. Those questions sit outside section 38 entirely, and they are still the ones that decide whether a claim is paid.

From a fixed term to a rolling tenancy

Most tenancies let in England before 1 May 2026 began as an assured shorthold tenancy (AST) with a fixed term, after which the tenancy continued on a periodic basis if nobody signed a new agreement. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 removes the fixed term itself. A tenancy in England is now a periodic tenancy from the outset, running from one rent period to the next with no end date written into it.

Why the tenancy named in your policy wording counts

A landlord insurance policy drafted some years ago may still describe the tenancy it covers as an assured shorthold tenancy with a fixed term, because that was the standard tenancy type when the wording was written. Rent guarantee wording in particular often sets conditions around the fixed term, such as what happens if the tenant stays on once it would have ended. Where your tenancy is now periodic from the start, it is worth checking whether the policy's own definition of the tenancy it insures still describes what you have let. The rent guarantee guide sets out how referencing and tenancy-type conditions are usually written.

What to check at your next renewal

• How the policy defines a tenancy or an assured shorthold tenancy, and whether a periodic tenancy with no fixed term falls within that definition
• Whether any condition in the wording refers to the end of a fixed term, and what the insurer says applies where there is no fixed term to end
• Whether the insurer has updated the wording to reflect tenancies in England as they stand since 1 May 2026

The guide on periodic tenancies and landlord insurance goes through how insurers have described this change in their own wording.