All of which is fine if you know that the old and new scales are not aligned in the rent register tool, and when rent setting you can make sufficient queries and document all of your rationale in detail. Most landlords will not be aware.
That is the whole thing in one line, and well done getting it in writing - that is exactly what the template was for.
What the RTB has admitted
Read the four admissions together and the RTB has conceded, on the record, that the tool the law makes mandatory cannot do one of the three things the form requires of it. The prescribed notice under S.I. 470/2026 requires three comparables from the Register matched on floor area, bedrooms and BER. The RTB now says the Register “does not automatically align old and new BER scales for matching purposes”, has no plan or timeline to fix it, and expects the landlord to “document the rationale” around the gap. The defect is theirs. The burden of working around it is yours.
Why the gap matters
The gap is not cosmetic. The new scale applies to certs issued from 24 May 2026, but existing certs run ten years, so both scales will sit side by side in the Register for most of a decade. A, B and C keep their old boundaries, but D, E and F were tightened and G now starts at 375 kWh/m2/yr instead of 450 - so a dwelling that was an F on an old cert is a G on a new one with not a brick changed. Two genuinely equivalent dwellings can carry different letters purely on cert date, and the Register, on the RTB’s own account, matches on the letter rather than the figure.
A strict match therefore either excludes real comparables assessed on the other scale, or pairs you with a dwelling that is not equivalent at all.
The hedge
Note the hedge too. The Register is “not the sole determinant” but is “a required and primary reference”. Mandatory enough that leaving it out sinks the notice; not reliable enough for the RTB to stand behind. It wants the Register to bind the landlord without binding itself.
An impossible condition
Step back and look at what has actually been built. The Act makes the Register the mandatory route to a market rent. The form makes a BER match one of three conditions of a valid notice. The RTB has now confirmed, in writing, that the Register cannot make that match across two scales that will coexist for a decade, that it has no intention of fixing it, and that the consequences of the mismatch are the landlord’s to document and the landlord’s to carry. That is not a glitch. It is an impossible condition written into a mandatory form, with the burden of the impossibility placed on the party the form binds.
Where it bites: the year-6 reset
And it bites hardest exactly where the reset was sold. The only route to market rent now is the year-6 reset, and the only permitted evidence for it is three Register comparables. One cross-scale comparable in three, no written equivalence rationale, and the notice is open to attack on a defect the RTB built and will not repair - with the onus on you, and one go at it. Nothing in the Act obliges the RTB to make the match possible. Everything in it obliges you to get the match right.
Design or indifference
Whether that is design or indifference I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter, because the effect is identical. A tool that cannot match, a form that demands a match, a regulator that declines to fix it and a Tribunal that puts the burden on the landlord is a machine for invalidating rent reviews at scale.
If you wanted a mass of year-6 resets struck down without ever having to change the law, you would build precisely this and then announce there is no timeline to change it.
If anyone else sent the template, post the reply you got. Four admissions from one query is a start; the same four from ten is a record - and the record is now the point.