The same week court fees went up for landlords, the fees on the other side of the table were restructured. Around 80 fees across the Residential Property Division of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) changed on 13 July 2026.
The number that matters to landlords: a tenant challenging a rent increase pays £47, and the hearing fee has been waived entirely.
Why this is more significant than the figure suggests
Forty-seven pounds is roughly a third of a week’s rent on an average Guildford property. If a tenant thinks a proposed increase is above market, the cost of testing that is now genuinely trivial — and with the hearing fee gone, there is no second payment waiting further down the process to deter them.
Set that against the rest of the current picture. Rent increases can only happen once a year, by Form 4A, with two months’ notice. Old contractual rent review clauses no longer operate. So the annual increase is now a single, formal, visible event rather than something that happened quietly at renewal — and it comes with a cheap, well-publicised route to challenge it.
The practical consequence is that a badly evidenced increase is far more likely to be tested than it used to be.
What a challenge actually involves
The tribunal is not deciding whether your increase is fair, or whether you deserve it. It is deciding what the property would reasonably let for on the open market. If your figure is at or below that, you are on solid ground. If it is above, the tribunal can determine a lower rent — and that determination binds you.
Which reframes the whole question. This is not really about tribunals. It is about whether you can evidence your number.
How to price an increase that survives
Use current, genuinely comparable evidence. Same area, similar property type, similar condition, let within the last few months. Not what your property achieved two years ago, and not the asking prices of things that have been sitting on the market unlet.
Write the evidence down before you serve the notice. Three or four comparables with addresses, dates and rents. If it is never challenged, you have lost twenty minutes. If it is, you have already done the work.
Be honest about condition. A property with an old kitchen and a D-rated EPC does not achieve the same as the refurbished one down the road, however similar the floorplan.
Consider the smaller, defensible increase. An increase slightly below what you might have pushed for, which the tenant accepts without friction, is usually worth more than a larger one that goes to tribunal, comes back reduced, and sours a working relationship you will now be in for years, because there is no fixed term to end it.
That last point is the one landlords keep underweighting. Under periodic tenancies, you and your tenant are in an open-ended arrangement. Winning an argument with someone you cannot easily part company with is not always winning.
First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) fee changes effective 13 July 2026. General information, not legal advice.
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