Rent Repayment Orders for tenants

You can apply for up to 100 per cent of your rent to be repaid if:

1) You were living in a house where your landlord committed one of the following offences:

• let the house as an unlicensed property
• failed to comply with an Improvement Notice
• failed to comply with a Prohibition Order
• used violence to enter the property
• illegal eviction or harassment of tenants
• breached a Banning Order

2) You need to be able to demonstrate to the First-tier Tribunal that the offence was committed. You can do this in the following ways:

• your landlord has been prosecuted
• your landlord has received a financial penalty
• it can be demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that the landlord committed the offence

3) You apply to the First-tier Tribunal (FtT) for a Rent Repayment Order (RRO):

• you can apply for up to 100% of your rent to be repaid to you (minus any Universal Credit), covering the period when you were living in the house and the offence was being committed by your landlord, up to a maximum of 12 months
• you must apply to the Tribunal within 12 months of the date when the offence was committed
• you must have been living in the property when the offence occurred, or was ongoing, to be eligible to apply

When determining how much rent to order your landlord to repay, the First-tier Tribunal will generally take into account:

• the conduct of the landlord and the tenant
• the financial circumstances of the landlord
• whether the landlord has been convicted of the offence

We can advise you on the process and provide supporting evidence.

We work closely with Justice for Tenants, a non-profit organisation specialising in advising tenants about Rent Repayment Orders who can also carry out the Rent Repayment Order on your behalf. Justice for Tenants have reclaimed over £120,000 in 60 rent repayment applications for tenants in Oxford of which 3 were r elated to Mandatory HMO licensing breaches, 56 related to Additional HMO licensing breaches and 1 relating to Selective Licensing breaches (data correct 30 September 2024). You can contact Justice for Tenants directly on oxfordrro@justicefortenants.org.

Other organisations are available to help tenants recover rent.

Technical guidance on Rent Repayment Orders is available on GOV.UK.