Electronic Written Statement of Terms

What the Act and its regulations focus on is content, not delivery mechanism: the landlord's name and address for service, the property address, rent, deposit, and the other prescribed fields set out in the 2026 Regulations. Neither Section 16D itself nor those Regulations dictate a specific format for handing the document over — see GOV.UK's Tenancy agreements: written information for your tenant guidance for the full list of required fields.

That's different from a separate, government-produced document called the Information Sheet, which existing tenants received by 31 May 2026 under a different part of the same Act. GOV.UK guidance on the Information Sheet is explicit that electronic delivery of the document itself is acceptable — but that a link to it is not. It's reasonable to apply the same practical standard to the Written Statement of Terms, but the two documents are not identical and shouldn't be confused with each other.

Email is the most common way OfficeDraft users deliver a Written Statement of Terms, and there's nothing in the Act that rules it out. The open question isn't whether email works, it's what you put in the email.

For the closely related Information Sheet, GOV.UK's own published guidance is unambiguous: emailing or texting a link to the PDF is not valid delivery, and the document itself must be sent. There is no equivalent published guidance for the Written Statement of Terms specifically, so the safer approach, given that gap, is to hold it to the same standard: attach the actual PDF to the email rather than relying on a link that could later break, get replaced, or be edited.

Yes. A PDF is, if anything, the more defensible format compared with a Word document or a pasted email body, because it can't easily be altered after it's sent and it prints and displays consistently regardless of what device the tenant opens it on.

OfficeDraft's generator produces the statement as a PDF for exactly this reason: it gives you a fixed, dated document you can attach directly to an email, upload to a tenant portal, or print and hand over, without the content shifting depending on how it's opened. Not sure what the finished document should look like first? See a completed Written Statement of Terms example.

No. The Written Statement of Terms is a disclosure document, it tells the tenant what the key terms of the tenancy are. It isn't the tenancy agreement itself, and there's no requirement for the tenant to countersign it for the statement to satisfy Section 16D.

That said, getting some form of acknowledgment, a short reply confirming receipt, a read receipt, or a signed line if you're printing a copy, is useful evidence if the timing or content of the statement is ever disputed. It's a good habit, not a legal precondition.