Rugby's cabinet votes Tuesday on a new penalty policy. The cap rises from £30,000 to £40,000, and the automatic 50% cut for low-income landlords goes.
Rugby Borough Council is about to change how much it fines landlords, and by how much it can fine them.
Cabinet meets on Tuesday 8 September to adopt two new policies covering enforcement in the private rented sector. If it agrees, and nobody calls the decision in, the new rules take effect on or around 17 September.
The council has published no news release about it. The detail is in item 13 of the cabinet agenda, which runs to several hundred pages.
What changes
The council’s current civil penalties policy dates from 2019. The report sets out four substantive changes:
- The single £30,000 cap is replaced by tiered statutory maxima of £7,000 or £40,000, depending on the offence.
- The old flat calculation, a starting figure plus fixed premiums, is replaced by a five-step matrix: starting point, landlord type, mitigating and aggravating factors, financial circumstances, then the totality principle.
- The automatic 50% reduction for a landlord with income below £440 a week is dropped. Low income no longer reduces a penalty automatically.
- The threshold at which a landlord counts as running a large portfolio falls from 10 or more units to six or more properties, or three or more HMOs. Hitting it adds 20% to the starting point.
The higher maxima come from the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, not from the council. What the council is setting is where in that range a Rugby penalty starts.
What each breach starts at
The policy publishes a starting point for every offence. A landlord with two or fewer properties and very limited experience gets 20% off it. A corporate landlord, a company director, or anyone who has held six or more properties gets 20% added, capped at the statutory maximum.
Some of the figures in the tables:
| Breach or offence | Starting point | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Unlawful eviction or harassment of an occupier | £35,000 | £40,000 |
| Failure to comply with an improvement notice | £25,000 | £40,000 |
| Knowingly permitting over-occupation of an HMO | £20,000 | £40,000 |
| Failure to obtain an HMO licence | £17,000 | £40,000 |
| Refusing to let to families with children, or to benefit claimants | £6,000 | £7,000 |
| Inviting or accepting rent above the advertised figure | £4,000 | £7,000 |
| Failing to state a proposed rent in an advertisement | £3,000 | £7,000 |
| Failure to give a tenant a written statement of terms | £4,000 | £7,000 |
The two rent ones are new law. From the Act, a landlord has to publish the rent being asked and cannot then invite or accept a higher offer. Rugby proposes to start a penalty for that at £4,000.
For unlawful eviction, the report lists the factors that push the fine up: violence or threats of violence, disposing of or threatening to dispose of a tenant’s possessions, breaching an injunction, and loss of the home. It records no offence-specific mitigating factors at all.
Who has been asked
Consultation has been thin so far, and the report says so.
- The draft policies were offered to the National Residential Landlords Association on 31 July, with the full documents sent on 18 August. The NRLA is still reviewing them. Its feedback “if available” will be reported before or at Tuesday’s meeting.
- Local letting agents and larger landlords are due to see the drafts at the council’s Landlord Forum. The report gives the date as “to be confirmed”.
- Internally, comments were limited to drafting points and no objections were raised.
Anything the landlord forum says afterwards would be handled through delegated authority, not another cabinet vote.
What it means for you
If you rent in Rugby. The council now has a statutory duty to enforce landlord legislation, and a published price list for doing it. If your landlord tries to end your tenancy orally, serves a notice outside the section 8 process, or refuses you because you have children or claim benefits, those are civil penalty matters rather than something you have to take to court yourself. Report them to the council’s environmental health and community safety team at the Town Hall on Evreux Way.
If you let a property in Rugby. Two changes bite hardest. The automatic half-price penalty for landlords on low incomes has gone, replaced by an individually evidenced assessment of hardship. And the portfolio threshold has dropped, so someone who has at any point held six properties, or three HMOs, now attracts the 20% uplift that used to need ten units.
If you want to stop it. The decision is subject to call-in. Under the council’s standing orders that takes the chair of the Scrutiny Committee plus two of its members, or any three councillors, within five clear working days of publication. Otherwise it starts on or around 17 September.
Cabinet meets at 6pm on Tuesday 8 September in the Council Chamber at the Town Hall, and the meeting is livestreamed on the council’s website. The council says the extra work is being paid for with government New Burdens funding, which is covering a temporary Renters’ Rights Act project officer post.
The council expects penalty income to stay low at first, because it intends to work with landlords to get compliance before it starts fining.
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