General information, not legal advice. The Act is being brought into force in stages, so check GOV.UK and your professional body for what applies to you now.
The Renters' Rights Act reshapes how tenancies end and how landlords and agents are held to account. Whatever the detail of each provision, the practical effect for an agent is the same: more of what you did, and when, may be tested. Repairs are the most common place that gets tested. This is a checklist of the repair records worth having in a form you can produce quickly.
The checklist
- Every report, dated. From the tenant, with photos, as received. Not a summary written later.
- Every response, attributed. Who acted, what they decided and when.
- Every contractor visit. Who attended, when, and their photos of the result.
- Every cost, with its invoice. The figure and the document together.
- Every approval, by name. Who agreed the spend and at what time.
- Repeat reports per flat. A history, not isolated tickets, so patterns are visible.
- What the landlord was told. And when they were given access to the record.
- A retention rule. How long you keep the record, and the ability to delete it when it ends.
Why timing matters more now
When a dispute turns on whether a problem was reported and dealt with reasonably, the dates are the evidence. A record whose entries cannot be quietly edited carries more weight than one that can. That is the reason FixDocket is append-only: the history can be corrected by adding to it, never by rewriting it.
Keep it simple
You do not need an elaborate system. You need one place where each repair lives from report to sign-off, and an export for when someone asks. See the repair audit trail, the related Awaab's Law note, and what a repair record needs in a dispute.