Income Ally
Platform
What the product is, and what it costs
The product Overview Stay human. Stay compliant. The queue Built overnight, and it explains itself. Rules and thresholds Readable, and yours to change. The empathy agent It drafts for a person. It decides nothing. Former tenants The six-year clock, enforced not reported.
Commercial Pricing On the size of the book, not per seat. Security and data Isolation in the database, not a WHERE clause. About Who builds it, and the rules we write by.
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Roles
Arrears software is bought by a committee
Finance and leadership CFO Can you break the arrears figure down? Chief Executive The regulator’s questions, answered first.
Income and service Head of Income A worklist that says why. Income Officer Without the cases that fix themselves. CX Director Nobody chased down a channel they cannot use.
Assurance and technical Regulatory Compliance Where the law says stop, it stops. IT & Data Lead Readable rules, a human in every decision.
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Answers
Arrears and the law, answered with the statute named
Holds and the clock Chasing former tenants Six years. What restarts it, and what doesn’t. Breathing Space Contact, interest and enforcement all stop. Mental health moratorium No 60-day cap, and usually no end date.
Possession and duties Pre-Action Protocol Judged when the claim is issued. Ground 8 It does not exist against a secure tenant. The equality duty Due regard, at the time, recorded.
Reporting and benefits Tenant Satisfaction Measures Which ones an income team moves. Universal Credit payments Managed payment and deduction are not the same.
Reference Glossary Twenty-two terms, statute named. Buyer’s guide Twelve questions for any vendor, us included.
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Legal spine
Every duty, and where it stops
What it does On screen, today Eight duties wired into what it will and won’t do. Evidenced, not certified It holds the record. A court decides if it is enough.
Where it stops What it does not do Nine of them, including a gap we would rather you read. Words you won’t find “Compliant”. “Approved”. “Guaranteed”.
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Arrears and the law

How long can a landlord chase former tenant rent arrears?

Six years, in almost every case.

Six years. Section 19 of the Limitation Act 1980 bars an action to recover arrears of rent after six years from the date the arrears became due, and section 5 sets the same six-year period for a simple contract debt. After that the debt still exists, but it can no longer be enforced through the courts.

The short version
How longSix years
From whenThe date each instalment of arrears became due — in practice, run from the latest of the last payment, the last written acknowledgement, or the end of the tenancy
StatuteLimitation Act 1980, s.19 (arrears of rent) and s.5 (simple contract debt)
What restarts itA written acknowledgement signed by the debtor, or a part payment (ss.29–30)
What does notAnything the landlord writes. A reminder letter, a statement or a final notice restarts nothing

What the six years runs from

Rent does not fall due as one lump. Each instalment has its own due date, so strictly each has its own clock, and a long-running arrears balance is a stack of debts expiring at different times.

Most landlords work to a single practical date instead: the latest of the last payment received, the last written acknowledgement, and the end of the tenancy. That is conservative, which is the right direction to be wrong in.

What restarts the clock, and what does not

Sections 29 and 30 of the Act are specific. A part payment restarts the period. So does an acknowledgement — but section 30(1) requires it to be in writing and signed by the person making it.

This is the point most often got wrong in practice: the landlord’s own correspondence has no effect at all. A statement of account, a reminder, a formal demand — none of them restarts anything, because none of them is the debtor acknowledging the debt. Only something the tenant writes and signs counts.

The date that matters is the date the tenant acknowledged, not the date somebody typed it into a system.

Barred, not extinguished

Limitation removes the remedy, not the debt. A statute-barred rent debt still exists; a tenant may still choose to pay it. What the landlord loses is the ability to bring a claim, which for a former-tenant balance is usually the only realistic route to recovery.

Continuing to pursue a debt you know to be statute-barred also carries its own risk under debt-collection standards, quite separate from whether the claim would succeed.

In the product

What Income Ally does about it

The six-year date is computed for every former-tenant debt, from the latest of last payment, last arrangement or tenancy end, and it is a live suppression rather than a quarterly report. Every chasing rule stops past it, and the exposure is ordered by what lapses first rather than by size.

An officer can record the tenant’s written acknowledgement, dated by when the tenant acknowledged rather than when it was entered. A configurable warning window before the date gives the team time to act while acting is still possible.

One deliberate exception: the clock keeps reporting inside a statutory moratorium. The deadline does not pause for one, and silence there is how a debt is lost.

Where this stops

What it does not do

Also asked

Related questions

Does a statute-barred rent debt disappear?

No. Limitation bars the remedy rather than extinguishing the debt. The balance still exists and can still be paid voluntarily; what is lost is the ability to enforce it through the courts.

Does sending a reminder letter restart the six years?

No. Only a written acknowledgement signed by the debtor, or a part payment, restarts the period under sections 29 and 30 of the Limitation Act 1980. Correspondence from the landlord has no effect.

Does the clock run from the end of the tenancy?

Not strictly. Each instalment of arrears runs from its own due date. The end of the tenancy is commonly used as a practical single date because it is later than most of the individual due dates, which is the conservative choice.

Does Breathing Space pause the limitation period?

No. A Breathing Space or mental health crisis moratorium stops contact and enforcement, but it does not extend the six-year period. An account can therefore be both protected from contact and approaching the point at which it can no longer be enforced.

Last reviewed 17 September 2026. General information on the law in England and Wales, not legal advice on a particular case.

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