Pet Request Record Keeping and Audit Trails for Landlords in England

Why Record Keeping Matters for Pet Requests

If a tenant challenges your pet decision — whether a refusal, a delayed response, or the conditions you attached to consent — the County Court will look at your documentary evidence. Verbal recollections of what happened and when are unconvincing. A dated paper trail showing each step of the statutory process is your strongest defence.

Record keeping is also useful if a council investigates a separate statutory issue, such as a prohibited fee or missing required tenancy information. An ordinary dispute about a pet refusal is a court matter, and a complete file helps you show what happened.

What to Keep

Every pet request generates a sequence of documents. Keep all of them, in chronological order:

The original request. The tenant's written pet request, including the date it was received and the method of delivery (email, letter, hand-delivered). If the request came by email, save the email with its headers. If by post, note the date it arrived and keep the envelope if it shows a postmark.

Your receipt log. A dated entry recording when you received the request and your calculated day-28 deadline. This is not a statutory requirement, but it proves you were aware of the deadline from the start.

Any information request. If you asked the tenant for further details about the animal, keep a copy of that letter or email and its date. This is what triggers the statutory extension — you need to prove it was sent on or before day 28.

The tenant's reply. When the tenant provides the requested information, log the date of receipt and recalculate the extended deadline (seven days after receipt, or day 28, whichever is later).

Superior landlord correspondence. If you applied for freeholder consent, keep a copy of your application letter, proof of delivery, and the freeholder's response (grant or refusal). Log the date each was sent and received.

Your written decision. The consent letter or refusal letter you sent to the tenant, including the date. If a refusal, keep copies of any supporting evidence (head lease clauses, allergy documentation, property measurements, HMO licence conditions).

The pet addendum. If consent was granted, the signed addendum specifying the animal and the conditions.

How Long to Keep Records

There is no statutory retention period specific to pet request records. The practical standard is the duration of the tenancy plus six years. This is a recordkeeping policy, not a statutory pet-record retention period; the general six-year limitation period for a simple contract claim runs from when the cause of action accrued. If the tenancy ends and no dispute arises within six years, the records can be disposed of.

For deposit adjudication purposes, the most critical records are the inventory photographs and the consent conditions, which you need immediately at checkout. Keep these accessible rather than archived.

A Simple Compliance Log

You do not need specialised software. A single dated log — a spreadsheet, a Word document, or even a handwritten notebook — that records each event in the sequence is sufficient. The key columns:

The value is in the dates and the linked documents. If every event is dated and every document is retained, you can reconstruct the entire timeline at a moment's notice.

The Tenant Pet Requests guide includes a pet request decision log template and a compliance file structure that organises every document from receipt through decision and archiving.

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