When your landlord has to ask someone else: freeholders, head leases and pets

A lot of pet refusals in England begin with the words the lease doesn’t allow it. Sometimes that is a bluff. Sometimes it is exactly true, and the landlord you are writing to is not the person who gets to decide. This guide is about telling the two apart, and about what the Renters’ Rights Act does with the second case.

England only. The pet provisions of the Act apply to assured tenancies in England and nowhere else.

The shape of the problem

Most flats are leasehold. Your landlord owns a lease of the flat from a freeholder, and that head lease binds them. If it contains a covenant against keeping animals, your landlord cannot lawfully give you a consent they do not have themselves, and a refusal on that ground is very likely to be a reasonable one.

Head leases vary. Some forbid animals outright. Some say no animals without the freeholder’s or the management company’s consent. Some say nothing about animals at all, in which case the lease is not the obstacle, whatever the agent remembers about it.

What the Act says

Section 16A of the Housing Act 1988, inserted by section 11 of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, gives your landlord 28 days from your request to give or refuse consent in writing. If consent from a superior landlord is needed and your landlord asks for it within those 28 days, the deadline for answering you moves to the seventh day after that answer comes back.

Two things follow from that. The extension only exists if your landlord actually asks the freeholder, and asks within the 28 days. And it is an extension for answering, not a licence to go quiet: the written answer is still owed, and silence after the freeholder replies is a missed deadline like any other. The full timeline is here.

Step one: find out what the lease says

Ask, politely and in writing, which clause of the head lease restricts pets, and whether consent is possible under it. There are three answers you might get.

The clause forbids animals outright. Then the honest position is that your landlord cannot say yes, and pressing them is unlikely to help. What can help is asking whether the freeholder or management company has ever varied that position, and whether there is a route to ask them directly. Some do not enforce old covenants; some have a written policy of their own.

The clause allows animals with the freeholder’s consent. This is the case the Act was written for. Your landlord should ask, and you should make that as easy as possible.

Nobody can point to a clause. Then the lease is not the reason, and the request should be considered on its own merits like any other. A landlord who cites the lease and cannot produce the words is in a weak position if it comes to a complaint.

Step two: make the freeholder’s job easy

If consent from above is needed, the most useful sentence you can add to your request is an offer to help: if consent is needed from the freeholder or the management company, I am happy to provide anything they need. Then mean it. A freeholder deciding about a dog in a converted house wants to know the same things any landlord does: what the animal is, how it behaves, what happens during the day, and whether the neighbours will be hearing from it. A one-page Pet CV answers those in the order they are asked.

If there is a managing agent for the building, they usually hold the lease and answer faster than the landlord does. There is nothing wrong with asking your landlord whether you may contact the managing agent directly to supply information.

Step three: keep the dates

Diary the original 28-day date. When your landlord tells you they have asked the freeholder, note that date too. When the freeholder answers, the seven days start. Ask your landlord to let you know when each of those happens; a landlord who is genuinely trying will not mind being asked.

If the freeholder says no

A refusal that rests on a genuine restriction in the head lease which the landlord cannot get round is the clearest example of a reasonable refusal the Act allows for. It is disappointing, and it is not the landlord being difficult. The options at that point are the ones that exist outside the Act: asking whether the restriction is ever varied, or looking for a property whose lease does not have it, which is one of the questions worth asking before you sign anything.

Where a paid letter fits

The free template includes the sentence about superior landlords, so the extension is acknowledged in the request itself. The Landlord Pet Request Kit produces the same letter with your details filled in, plus the Pet CV the freeholder will want to see, for £49. The lease question, though, is one only you can ask, and it is worth asking first.