Scope: England and Wales. The rental discrimination ban in the Renters' Rights Act 2025 applies across England, Wales and Scotland. Data protection duties are UK-wide. Verified 10 August 2026.
Referencing is where a lot of otherwise careful landlords now break the law, because the ground moved on 1 May 2026 and the habits did not.
What you may check
- Identity — and in England, Right to Rent, which is a legal duty rather than a choice.
- Affordability — income, from payslips, an employer's confirmation, accounts, or benefit award letters.
- Rental history — a previous landlord's reference.
- Credit — with the applicant's consent, and only what is relevant to whether the rent will be paid.
What you may no longer ask
Since 1 May 2026 it is unlawful to refuse a tenancy, or to treat an applicant less favourably, because they receive benefits or because they have children. That covers the obvious version — "no DSS" in a listing — and the quieter ones:
- An affordability rule that excludes benefit income from the calculation.
- A guarantor requirement applied only to benefit claimants.
- A rent-in-advance demand used to price the same people out.
Full detail in the rental discrimination ban. The test is effect, not intention: a policy that is neutral on its face and excludes in practice is still caught.
Beyond that, the Equality Act 2010's protected characteristics apply as they always have — race, sex, disability, religion, age, pregnancy, and the rest.
What the data actually predicts
This is where honesty is more useful than a checklist. The single best predictor of whether rent gets paid is whether rent has been paid before — a genuine reference from a previous landlord, ideally verified by a call rather than a letter the applicant supplied.
Affordability ratios are a blunter instrument than they look. The common rule of thumb — rent no more than a third of gross income — is a convention, not a legal standard, and applied rigidly it excludes people who have paid rent reliably for years. Income stability tells you more than income size.
Credit checks catch county court judgments and defaults. They do not catch someone who has simply never borrowed, and a thin file is not a bad file.
Data protection is not optional
You become a data controller the moment you collect this. In practice: collect only what you need, say what you will do with it, keep it only as long as the decision requires, and do not retain unsuccessful applicants' documents indefinitely. Holding a rejected applicant's passport scan for three years is a breach nobody notices until someone asks.
Where it sits
Referencing happens before the tenancy and therefore before most of the compliance sequence. It does not replace the Right to Rent check, which is a separate statutory duty with its own penalties. And if arrears do arrive later, the arrears sequence is what governs, not anything you wrote into the agreement.
Check your tenancy agreement free — it will flag clauses that no longer work under the new regime.