The SLA Gap

Picture a typical booking. A letting agent needs a check-out inventory. They message a clerk they've used for years. The clerk attends, sends the report back a couple of days later, and everyone moves on. No contract. No agreed turnaround time. No written record of what was actually asked for, or agreed to.

This isn't a story about the agent doing something wrong, or the clerk cutting corners. It's simply how the property inspection sector has operated for years, on both sides of the relationship. But it has a name, and it's worth giving it one: the SLA gap.

What we mean by the SLA gap

An SLA, a Service Level Agreement, is just a written record of what's been agreed: turnaround times, scope, who's responsible for what, and what happens if something goes wrong. Across the sector, that document very often doesn't exist for either party. Jobs are booked by email, phone or WhatsApp, and the relationship runs on goodwill and habit rather than anything written down.

Most of the time, that's fine for everyone involved. Right up until it isn't.

• Insurance checked once, at the start. The property manager confirmed cover when the relationship began. Nobody's checked since; policies lapse, cover changes, and neither side finds out until it matters.

• Turnaround time never actually agreed. Everyone has an expectation of how quickly a report should land. Nobody's ever confirmed it's the same expectation.

• Scope assumed, not confirmed. What the job covers, what "done" looks like, what happens if access fails, all understood differently by each side, because neither side wrote it down.

• No agreed policy for failed access. The clerk arrives and can't get the job done, contractors still working, keys not available, whatever the reason. Nobody's agreed whether that's chargeable, because the clerk turned down other work to be there.

• No agreed process for amendments or disputes. Who checks the report before it goes out, and who's on the hook if a claim comes back months later querying what it said, is rarely settled until the moment it's actually being asked.

• No record of who actually attends. A colleague or associate covers a job. Reasonable in the moment; unrecorded a year later, when it matters who was actually there.

Some of the above bullet points are just good practice. One of them, as it happens, is about to become a legal requirement.

When something goes wrong, the absence of a written agreement (SLA) is hard to unpick after the fact, for whoever's left holding the problem, because by definition there was nothing to point back to in the first place.

Why this matters now

From 1 October 2026, changes to the UK's Right to Work framework raise the stakes on exactly this gap. Under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, liability for illegal working can extend along a chain of contracts, with civil penalties of up to £45,000 for a first breach and £60,000 per worker after that. This potentially affects letting agents, property managers and the inventory businesses they work with, depending on how those working relationships are actually structured. One of the clearest ways to demonstrate that a relationship is what it's always been understood to be is a written agreement that says so, in place before work starts.

That's a big deal on its own. But it's worth being honest about something else too: the SLA gap was never just a Right to Work problem. It shows up in disputed deposit claims, in disagreements about service standards, and in the simple question of who's accountable when something falls through. These are questions that matter just as much to the clerk attending the job as to the agent who booked it.

What's coming

We're publishing a detailed white paper shortly that walks through exactly where this gap creates risk for property managers, letting agents, BTR and PBSA providers, and the inventory clerks and suppliers who work with them, with real legal and regulatory examples behind each one.

Klerky will also be sharing more in the coming weeks on the practical steps property managers and inventory clerks can take in response to these changes, including updates to our terms of service and supplier SLA templates.

Whichever side of a property inspection booking you're on, it's worth asking a simple question now: if something went wrong on your next job, could you point to something in writing that said what was agreed? If the honest answer is no, you're not alone. There's a straightforward way to close that gap. More on that soon.

If you want the fuller legal picture

We're not immigration lawyers, so we asked one. Katie Good, a solicitor at Travers Smith who specialises in this area, has written a companion piece that goes into the detail we've deliberately kept light here: what the new regime actually requires, who it's likely to catch, and what "genuinely self-employed" needs to mean in practice for it to hold up. If you want the legal detail behind the headline, read Katie's guide to the Right to Work changes.