Guidance for enforcement of sales and letting businesses

Documents to help officers with the enforcement of estate and letting agents

Estate Agencies enforcement

Our Trading Standards Estate Agency Compliance Toolkit has information to help with local compliance work.

It includes:

• best practice
• example letters
• scenarios for enforcers 

To access the toolkit contact us with your email address and we'll send you log in details for our khub site.

Letting agencies enforcement

The Tenant Fees Act

The Tenant Fees Act came into force on 1 June 2019.  It explains the amount of fees which can be charged to a tenant.

• Tenant Fees Act 2019: statutory guidance for enforcement agencies
• Guidance for local authorities: how to apply the Tenant Fees Act 2019 (pdf, 259KB) (opens new window)  

We have a toolkit to help you understand the Tenant Fees Act. To access the toolkit contact us with your email address and we'll send you log in details for our khub site.

Tenant Fees Act financial penalty policy

As the lead enforcement agency for the Tenant Fees Act, Bristol City Council has adopted the following policy for financial penalties under the Tenant Fees Act.

• Tenant Fees Act financial penalties policy  (pdf, 442KB) (opens new window) . 

We’re publishing this policy as the national approach, to help promote consistency among enforcement authorities. 

Other enforcement authorities may have different priorities and may choose to deviate from this national approach. Before you adopt a different financial penalty notice policy you should: 

• consider your  local authority’s constitution 
• get advice from legal services

Notice of intent

You can use a notice of intent to tell a trader that they’ll receive a fixed penalty notice if they don’t comply with the law. 

You can issue a notice of intents for the following categories:    

• Client money protection schemes (pdf, 421KB) (opens new window)
• Fee advertising  (pdf, 796KB) (opens new window)
• Prohibited payments (pdf, 721KB) (opens new window)   
• Redress schemes (pdf, 421KB) (opens new window)

Final notices

There are final notices for the same four categories:

• Client money protection schemes  (pdf, 592KB) (opens new window)
• Fee advertising (pdf, 888KB) (opens new window)   
• Prohibited payments  (pdf, 789KB) (opens new window)
• Redress schemes  (pdf, 694KB) (opens new window)

Report a property sales business

You can report a property business using our contact form.