Landlord Law ‘bills included’ tenancy agreements – a solution (maybe)

I wrote a post here about the Landlord Law ‘bills included’ clauses in our tenancy agreements as I don’t think the clauses as drafted would pass muster after the Renters Rights Bill comes into force.

Its been bothering me for a while.

My original thought (as set out in that post) was that all landlords should abandon this method of dealing with bills and that I should remove these clauses altogether from our agreements.

However, I was then contacted by one of our student landlord members who said they would very much want the bills included option to remain, and that they were common for student lets. So I said I would do what I can.

I have finally now re-drafted these clauses in a form which will (I hope) survive the Renters Rights Bill.

They will be present in all English tenancy agreements from 19 July 2025 where the ‘bills included’ option is chosen when creating the form.

My view remains though, that landlords should not offer ‘bills included’ tenancy agreements:

Why bills included tenancy agreements are inadvisable

• Despite the wording of the clauses, if the cost of the included bills exceeds the bills allowance, it may prove difficult to recover this from the tenants and you could suffer a financial loss.
• Increasing the rent to increase the bills allowance may prove difficult if you are using the statutory notice procedure (as you will have to when the Renters Rights Bill becomes law) and the tenant challenges the proposed new rent.  This will be less of a problem with student lets when they will only be living in the property for a limited time.
• Landlords need to be really careful when charging for utilities to charge the amount that they have paid and not to add a markup.  If you are found to have overcharged the tenants can claim a refund, possibly through legal action.

So my advice to landlords when creating a tenancy agreement is still to select ‘no’ when the form asks, ‘Are you going to pay ANY of the bills for the tenants?’