Can Landlords Refuse Pets in a Rental Property?

What does the renters’ rights act say about pets?

It gives the tenant a statutory right to request a pet in writing and stops you refusing without good reason. The right took effect on 1 May 2026 and applies to the tenancy whether or not your agreement mentions animals.

How the implied term works

Section 11 of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 inserts sections 16A and 16B into the Housing Act 1988. Section 16A makes the pet right a term of every assured tenancy other than social housing.

The Act defines a pet as an animal kept mainly for personal interest, companionship or ornamental purposes. Dogs, cats, rabbits, birds and fish are in; a working animal or livestock kept for income is not.

The request has to be in writing and has to describe the animal. A passing question about whether you mind dogs does not start the clock.

Which lets it covers

Assured tenancies are now the standard private let in England, so in practice this reaches almost every residential landlord. The government’s guide to the Renters’ Rights Act sets out the wider regime it sits inside.

Holiday and short-term lets are not assured tenancies, so the pet right does not reach them. Those need short-let and Airbnb cover rather than a standard let policy, and you keep full say over animals.

How long do you have to answer a pet request?

Twenty-eight days from the date of the request, and the answer has to be in writing. Two things can push that date back, and both need you to act inside the original 28 days.

The three deadlines that can apply

The base rule is a written decision on or before the 28th day after the request. Saying nothing is not the same as saying no.

If you reasonably need more detail about the animal, ask for it before day 28. Your deadline then becomes the seventh day after the tenant supplies it.

If your own lease means you need the freeholder’s or head landlord’s consent, apply for it before day 28. Your deadline becomes the seventh day after their answer reaches you.

What happens if you miss the deadline

Missing it does not hand the tenant automatic permission, because nothing in the Act deems consent to have been given. It puts you in breach of a term of the tenancy instead.

Section 16B lets the court order specific performance, so a judge can simply direct you to give consent. Turning up to that hearing having ignored a statutory deadline is a poor place to argue about reasonableness.

What counts as a reasonable refusal?

A refusal has to be about this animal in this property, set out in writing. The only grounds the Act names involve a superior landlord, so everything else has to be argued on the facts.

Grounds that stand up

Section 16B names two. Keeping the pet would put you in breach of an agreement with a superior landlord, or that agreement requires their consent and you have taken reasonable steps to get it without success.

That is a leasehold problem more than anything else, and the covenant sits in the head lease rather than in your tenancy. Read it alongside the schedule for the block of flats policy before you reply.

Beyond those two the test is ordinary reasonableness. In a licensed HMO, a large dog in a house where five people share one kitchen is a different question from the same dog in a self-contained flat.

Name the specific problem: the shared facility, the absence of any outside space, the number of animals already there. Vague unsuitability is not an argument.

Grounds that do not

Preference is not a ground, and neither is a clause in your own agreement, because the implied term overrides it. Nor is a general worry about smell or noise from an animal you have never assessed.

A buy-to-let mortgage condition is weaker than most landlords assume, and many offers say nothing about pets at all. Check the actual offer document before you lean on it.

Blaming your insurer will not work either. Insurers do not exclude pets as a class, and the gaps in your policy are your problem to fix rather than the tenant’s.

Can you refuse a specific breed or type of animal?

Yes, where the animal is banned, licensable or genuinely unsuited to the building. A species ban written into the agreement is not enforceable on its own.

Banned dogs and licensable animals

Five dog types are prohibited in England and Wales: the Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro and, since February 2024, the XL Bully. Government guidance on banned dogs also covers the Index of Exempted Dogs.

Refusing a prohibited type is not a judgement call, since owning one without a court exemption is a criminal offence. An exempted dog is a separate case, and its owner must already hold third party liability insurance for it.

Animals needing a Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 licence are fair grounds too. So are numbers, because ten reptile vivaria in a one-bedroom flat is a humidity and loading question rather than a pet preference.

Visiting animals are a separate question

Section 16B says a tenant keeps a pet if they let it live at the property, whether or not they own it. A dog housed there for a relative is caught by exactly the same rules.

The section also leaves you free to agree terms about animals that visit and do not live there. That is the one place a plain contractual restriction still bites.

What can you charge a tenant who keeps a pet?

Nothing extra. There is no pet deposit, no lawful pet insurance charge and no way to bolt a pet premium onto the rent mid-tenancy.

Why there is no pet deposit

The Tenant Fees Act 2019 caps the tenancy deposit at five weeks’ rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks where it is £50,000 or more. The Renters’ Rights Act left that cap exactly where it was.

Anything above the cap is a prohibited payment and has to be repaid. The deposit still goes into the DPS, MyDeposits or TDS within 30 days of receipt, pet or no pet.

Rent changes now run through the statutory notice route, so you cannot quietly add a pet premium as the price of consent. Setting a higher rent at the start of a new tenancy is a different thing entirely.

The pet insurance clause that never made it

The Bill originally let landlords require pet damage insurance and recover the premium from the tenant. That clause was taken out during the Bill’s passage and does not appear in the Act.

Schedule 1 of the Tenant Fees Act lists every payment a landlord may lawfully take, and pet insurance is not on it. Asking a tenant to buy it, or to reimburse you for buying it, is a prohibited payment.

You can suggest a tenant insures their own animal’s liability. You cannot make it a condition of saying yes.

What getting it wrong costs

A first prohibited payment carries a financial penalty of up to £5,000 from the local authority. Where the breach is an offence, because you have done it again within five years, the penalty can reach £30,000 or prosecution.

Charging for end-of-tenancy cleaning because of the pet falls into the same trap. Cleaning fees have been banned since 2019 and an animal does not revive them.

How do you cover pet damage if you cannot charge for it?

Through the deposit first and your policy second. The deposit is capped and the damage is not, so the sections of your landlord policy that respond to tenant damage matter more than they used to.

Where the deposit runs out

On a £1,200 a month tenancy, five weeks’ rent is roughly £1,385. That is the whole cushion for a ruined stair carpet, scratched door frames and a dug-up lawn.

Deductions also have to allow for fair wear and tear, and you cannot bill for betterment by replacing a ten-year-old carpet with a new one. Scheme adjudicators want dated photographs and a signed inventory, not an estimate written after the tenant left.

Which cover responds

Damage a tenant or their animal causes by accident sits under accidental damage cover, which is an optional section on most policies rather than a standard one. Deliberate damage falls under malicious damage by tenants, often another add-on.

Landlord contents cover picks up the carpets, curtains and white goods you supplied, while landlord buildings insurance deals with fitted items such as doors and kitchen units.

Neither will pay for gradual soiling, odour or fur damage, which insurers treat as wear rather than an event. That is the gap the inventory and the deposit have to close.

If the property cannot be let while the work is done, loss of rent cover fills the void. Check the limit, because it is usually a percentage of the sum insured rather than an open figure.

Read the schedule before you answer a pet request rather than after. Our guide to what a landlord policy covers sets out which sections are standard and which you have to ask for.

What about assistance dogs and support animals?

An assistance dog is not a pet request and should never be handled as one. Refusing it is far more likely to be disability discrimination than an unreasonable refusal.

Assistance dogs and reasonable adjustments

Part 4 of the Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful for a person managing premises to discriminate against a disabled occupier, and sections 35 and 36 bring in a duty to make reasonable adjustments.

Applying a no pets practice to a guide dog is the textbook failure of that duty. The 28 day pet process is the wrong frame for it in the first place.

Ask what the dog does rather than whether the tenant qualifies as disabled. Assistance dog charities issue identification, but there is no single statutory register you can demand to see.

Emotional support animals

Emotional support animals have no separate legal status in the UK, unlike in the United States. That does not make a refusal safe.

If the tenant’s condition meets the Equality Act definition of disability, allowing the animal may itself be the reasonable adjustment. Ask for a letter from a clinician, then record what you decided and why.

What should your pet policy say?

Write the process, not a ban. A policy that explains how you assess a request, what the tenant is responsible for and how condition gets recorded will survive challenge in a way a prohibition never will.

Clauses worth including

• Confirm that requests are considered individually and answered in writing within 28 days.
• List the information you will ask for: species, breed, age, size and how long the animal is left alone.
• Make the tenant responsible for flea and worm treatment, garden fouling and noise.
• Require pet damage to be made good, which is a repair obligation rather than a fee.
• Limit numbers by reference to the property’s size, not by species.

Avoid any wording that attaches a payment to the animal, because that is where prohibited payments creep in. An obligation to put damage right is fine; a charge to cover it is not.

The inventory does the heavy lifting

Photograph carpets, skirtings, doors, garden turf and fencing on the day the animal moves in, not only at check-in. Date-stamped images are what deposit adjudicators actually weigh.

Book a mid-term inspection about three months after the pet arrives. Catching a scratched door early costs filler and a coat of paint rather than a new door.

What if a tenant moves a pet in without asking?

Write to them and ask for a proper request rather than reaching for possession. Eviction purely over an unauthorised pet is a hard case to run and an expensive one to lose.

The proportionate response

Send a written notice of the breach and invite a formal pet request within a set period. If it arrives and you have no reasonable ground to refuse, consent and move on.

Where the tenant refuses to engage, or the animal is causing damage or nuisance, possession runs through the Section 8 grounds. That is a court process, and legal expenses cover is what pays for it.

Cases like this often run alongside arrears, which is where rent guarantee insurance earns its place. Possession has taken considerably longer since Section 21 was abolished.

Where pet disputes go now

A tenant who believes a refusal was unreasonable applies to the county court, which can order specific performance of the implied term. There is no tribunal route for pet decisions.

The Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman is provided for in the Act but is not yet taking cases as at September 2026. Until it opens, the court is the only forum.