Broadband for renters: the tenancy law changed in May and broadband did not, what your landlord actually has to allow, and the request that gets a reply

The short version, and what it does not claim

Direct answer: The law made renting maximally flexible on 1 May 2026, and broadband did not move.

Start with the good news, because it is genuinely good and it is four months old. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025. On 1 May 2026 it took effect, and gov.uk records the result: “Most existing assured shorthold tenancies automatically became assured periodic tenancies on 1 May 2026.” Those tenancies run differently now: “Assured periodic tenancies run on a rolling basis, for example, weekly or monthly.” And most importantly, “It is no longer possible to have an assured tenancy agreement with an end date.”

Which means a private renter in England is freer than at any point in living memory. gov.uk sets out how: “If you want to end an assured periodic tenancy after 1 May 2026, you can end it by giving 2 months' notice”. No fixed term to sit out, no break clause to negotiate, no waiting for a date on a piece of paper.

Now look at what you sign for the broadband. Every assured tenancy in England now runs with no end date and can be ended on two months' notice. The shortest broadband contract most providers sell is twelve months. The one carrying the cheapest headline price is usually twenty four, and not one of those numbers moved in May. The mismatch that used to be a student problem on a nine month let now sits under the whole private rented sector, which is not small: “In 2024-25, the private rented sector accounted for 4.7 million or 19% of households.”

The second thing this page is about is the asking, and the finding there is more cheerful than you would expect. The permission problem is silence rather than refusal, and the thing being asked for is a 12mm hole. None of this is a landlord problem or a tenant problem. It is an information problem: the rules changed in May, the repairing covenant was written in 1985, and nobody sends the landlord the one paragraph that would let them say yes.

So this page does two things. It gives you a letter that answers the landlord's questions before they ask them, and it gives the landlord a panel of their own, quoted from the people who would actually do the work. If somebody sent you this link and you are the one being asked, start there.

Write your permission request

Direct answer: Ask in writing, and lead with what it actually is: free, a 12mm hole, and no ongoing obligation for the landlord. A request that answers the landlord's questions before they ask them is the one that gets answered.

The generator runs entirely in your browser. There is no form to submit, no address sent to any server and nothing stored: what you type is assembled on this page and gone when you close the tab. Every quoted line inside the letter is the operator's own published wording, so a landlord who checks it will find it says exactly what you said it says.

Send it to the person who can actually say yes. In a rented house that is normally your landlord. In a block of flats it is usually the freeholder or the managing agent instead: “In some cases, we may need your consent by signing a wayleave before we can build Full Fibre.” Send it to both, and say in the first line that you have.

Your tenancy got shorter. Your contract did not

Direct answer: Every assured tenancy in England now runs with no end date and can be ended on two months' notice. The shortest broadband contract most providers sell is twelve months.

Both halves of that are published and neither is in dispute. On the tenancy, gov.uk: “It is no longer possible to have an assured tenancy agreement with an end date.” On ending it: “If you want to end an assured periodic tenancy after 1 May 2026, you can end it by giving 2 months' notice”. On the broadband, look at what a provider will actually sell you. Plusnet publishes the choice in plain words: “choose between a contract with a minimum term (normally lasting 12 or 18 months) or take a contract without a minimum term”. BT is blunter about where its prices live: “Most of our contracts are 24 months, but we do have some that are 18”.

So the arithmetic is simple and unpleasant. Sign twenty four months, give notice on your tenancy in month three, and you have twenty one months of a contract at an address you no longer live at. You can move it, if the new place can take it, and that is often the right answer. What you cannot do is assume it will be free.

The fix is not to avoid long contracts on principle. Plenty of renters stay five years in the same flat and a twenty four month price is the right buy for them. The fix is to make the decision knowingly: count the months you are reasonably confident of, then price the freedom to leave against the discount for staying. The section further down does that arithmetic with published numbers.

Nobody has to give you broadband

Direct answer: No landlord has to give you broadband, or keep an existing line working.

This surprises people, so it is worth reading the statute rather than a summary of it. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 implies a repairing covenant into almost every residential tenancy, and the relevant limb requires a landlord “to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for the supply of water, gas and electricity and for sanitation”. The next limb adds “to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for space heating and heating water”.

That is the whole list. The words telecommunications, telephone, internet and broadband appear nowhere in section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Nor is the gap filled by guidance: gov.uk's current tenant guidance says nothing about broadband at all: the page that replaced the withdrawn How to rent guide does not mention broadband, internet, phone, utilities or bills anywhere.

Shelter states the practical consequence for the bills: “If your agreement does not mention bills, you are probably responsible for paying bills yourself.” So unless your agreement says otherwise, the broadband is yours to arrange, yours to pay for and yours to cancel, and a line that stops working is not a repair anybody owes you.

One thing to check before you sign anything, because it is the exception. Citizens Advice: “Check your tenancy agreement - it might say you can't switch internet, landline or TV provider.” And specifically on the work: “They might say you can't switch TV providers if it involves drilling holes for cables or putting up a satellite dish.” Nothing published by gov.uk or Ofcom prohibits a tenancy term that ties a tenant to a named broadband supplier, and nothing treats such a term as unfair. Find that clause before you sign rather than after, when you still have something to negotiate with.

The problem is silence, not refusal

Direct answer: The permission problem is silence rather than refusal, and the thing being asked for is a 12mm hole.

Everybody assumes the obstacle is a landlord who says no. The Government's own paperwork says otherwise. Explaining why the Part 4A route had to exist at all, the explanatory memorandum to the 2022 regulations records: “Data suggests that 40% of industry requests to required grantors go without any response.”

Two in five. Not refused, not argued over, just never answered. And once you know that, the whole problem changes shape: you are not trying to win an argument, you are trying to get a reply.

There is a legal route, and it is worth knowing its limits before you rely on it. The Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021 created “a fasttrack route by which a telecommunications operator may apply to a court for an order (a 'Part 4A order') granting rights to access to a 'multiple-dwelling unit'”, and the Government's guidance sets out when it bites: “Operators can use the Part 4A process to access blocks of flats and apartments if a service has been requested by a tenant, but a landlord of connected land is repeatedly unresponsive to requests for access.”

The good news is what it takes to move yourself out of the four in ten. Name yourself and the property. Say what the work is in one line. Say what it costs them, which is nothing. Give them a date you would like an answer by and a link to the operator's own landlord page. A request that can be answered in a minute usually is.

What your landlord is actually agreeing to

Direct answer: A 12mm hole, two small boxes, no charge and no ongoing obligation, in Openreach's own published words.

Permission is genuinely needed, and Openreach says so without hedging: “Yes. As the property owner, your consent is required before any work begins.” So the question is not whether to ask. It is what you are asking for, and the answer is smaller than most people picture.

On cost, Openreach publishes “Full Fibre installation is completely free of charge.” For a block it goes further: “We want to survey and connect your multi-dwelling properties to our Full Fibre network at no cost to you.” And on what the owner is signing up to afterwards: “The installation is free of cost with no ongoing obligations.”

On the physical work, the numbers are published too. “We'll need to drill a 12mm hole through the wall to connect the two boxes.” What is left is a “15cm x 13cm external junction box installed on the outside of your property.” and an “Internal box around 13cm x 11cm installed inside the property.” Drawn against a standard door, as above, that is about the footprint of two plug sockets.

And on the things a landlord actually worries about, Openreach commits in writing. On damage: “Our engineers work carefully to avoid damage. If any occurs, we'll cover the cost of repairs.” On tidiness: “The engineer will fill the holes when they're done and leave it neat and tidy.” On whether anything gets cut off while the work happens: “No, all active services will remain fully in place throughout the installation process and afterwards.”

One honest gap belongs here rather than buried at the bottom. No operator publishes what happens to the equipment at the end of an agreement, or any commitment to remove it. What CityFibre does publish about the agreement itself is that “A wayleave is indefinite. That's because it's an ongoing agreement that allows us to maintain the apparatus.” If you are the person signing, ask what happens at the end and get the answer in writing, because nothing published will tell you.

For landlords and letting agents

Direct answer: If a tenant has sent you this page, the short version is that the work is free to you, it is a 12mm hole, and Openreach publishes that it carries no ongoing obligations.

This section is written for you rather than about you, and it is quoted rather than argued. Every answer below is the operator's own published wording, and where nothing is published this page says so instead of filling the gap.

If you would rather hear it from the people doing the work, Openreach publishes its own landlord material, and a tenant's request is easier to judge with two minutes of that behind it. For a new build the question does not usually arise at all: building regulations already require that “Each dwelling must in addition be provided with a connection to a gigabit-capable public electronic communications network.” There is a limit on that duty: “The cost cap of £2,000 per dwelling applies to the installation of a functional connection.”

England, Scotland, Wales, and council tenants

Direct answer: The Renters' Rights Act changes are England only. Scotland's private residential tenancy already had no end date and takes 28 days' notice from the tenant; Wales has occupation contracts under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 with a four-week minimum.

The May change is an England change, and saying England while meaning the UK is how guidance goes wrong. In Scotland the private residential tenancy already had no end date, and the notice a tenant gives is shorter: “You must give your landlord at least 28 days' notice in writing.” In Wales renters hold occupation contracts under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, and “The notice period is a minimum of four weeks.”

Shorter notice makes the broadband mismatch sharper rather than softer. A Scottish renter can be gone in four weeks and still owe eleven months of a twelve month contract.

Who you rent from matters as much as where. If you are a council or housing association tenant, gov.uk states the position: “If you're a secure tenant, you have the right to carry out improvements to your property.” Section 97 of the Housing Act 1985 makes written consent a term of every secure tenancy and covers “any addition or alteration connected with the provision of services to the dwelling-house”, which is what a connection is. Then the sentence that does the work: “The consent required by virtue of subsection (1) shall not be unreasonably withheld, and if unreasonably withheld shall be treated as given.”

And section 98 puts the burden where it belongs: “If a question arises whether the withholding of a consent required by virtue of section 97 was unreasonable, it is for the landlord to show that it was not.” A secure tenant therefore asks with the law behind them, and a refusal has to be justified rather than simply issued.

Picking a contract that fits a tenancy

Direct answer: Count the months you are actually confident of, then price the freedom to leave against the discount for staying.

A rolling or no-minimum-term package costs more every month and owes nothing when you go. Several providers publish both, which makes the trade easy to see. Plusnet: “choose between a contract with a minimum term (normally lasting 12 or 18 months) or take a contract without a minimum term”. Virgin Media: “Cancelling our no contract broadband is as straight forward as giving just 30 days' notice. There's no waiting for a 24 month contract to end and you can forget about paying any early exit fees (there are none!)”, and to its credit it also publishes the cost of that freedom: “if you're on a budget, see if you can get the same Virgin Media speed for a lower monthly price on a longer term contract”.

NOW sells the same shape with a longer notice period: “you'll just need to let us know 31 days in advance if you want to cancel, and you won't need to pay any early termination charges”. Hyperoptic publishes “1Gb full fibre. £29/m. Rolling monthly”. None of those is the cheapest per month, and none of them can bill you for an address you left.

Two protections apply whichever you choose, and both are Ofcom's. Before you are bound you must be given “a one-page (or three-page for bundled services) contract summary in writing, that includes key information, such as charges, the length of the contract and the process for cancelling”, which is where a minimum term appears, and it takes ten seconds to read. And on a mid-contract price rise, Ofcom's rule is that “companies that include specified price rises in their contracts must set these out clearly, in pounds and pence, before you sign up”.

If you are renting with other people, settle one thing before anybody orders anything: no UK provider publishes a way to put two people on a single broadband account, so whoever signs owes the whole bill and the whole exit charge. Our house shares guide covers the arrangements that work, and the moving and renting hub works out your notice deadline when you do leave.

One last thing worth knowing if the line is late. Ofcom's automatic compensation publishes “£6.46 for each calendar day of delay” where a service does not start on the promised date and “£32.31 per missed appointment” for a missed engineer appointment. The scheme is not universal, though: BT, EE, Hyperoptic, Plusnet, Sky (including NOW Broadband), TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Zen Internet are signed up to Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme. It is voluntary, so a provider outside that list owes none of it. Keep the promised date in writing, because that is the whole of what a claim rests on.

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