On 1 May 2026, Section 21 "no fault" evictions were abolished under the Renters' Rights Act. If you're a landlord in England, this is the single biggest change to how you manage the end of a tenancy — and it applies whether the tenancy started last month or five years ago.
What actually changed
Before 1 May 2026, a landlord could end an assured shorthold tenancy without giving a reason, using a Section 21 notice. That option is gone. Every assured tenancy in England has also converted automatically into a rolling periodic tenancy — there's no such thing as a fixed term ending anymore.
From now on, the only lawful way to end a tenancy and reclaim possession is a Section 8 notice, citing one or more specific legal grounds — arrears, sale, wanting the property back, breach of tenancy, and so on.
A Section 21 or Section 8 notice served before the cut-off remains valid, but only if you started court proceedings by 31 July 2026. After that date, an unused notice expires and you'll need to start again under the new rules.
Does this affect tenancies that started years ago?
Yes. The changeover wasn't just for new tenancies — every existing assured shorthold tenancy converted to a periodic tenancy on 1 May 2026, regardless of when it began. There's nothing you need to sign or reissue for that conversion to take effect; it happened automatically. What you can no longer do, on any tenancy, is serve a no-fault notice.
What this means if you need a property back
You now need a specific, evidenced ground under Section 8. The most commonly used ones:
- Rent arrears — the mandatory threshold is now three months' unpaid rent, and the notice period has doubled to four weeks.
- Intention to sell — a new mandatory ground, but it requires four months' notice and generally can't be used until the tenancy has run at least a year.
- Landlord wants the property back for personal or family use, subject to its own conditions and notice period.
- Breach of tenancy or anti-social behaviour — grounds that existed before, now sitting alongside the new ones.
Each ground has its own evidence requirements and notice period, and getting the wrong one — or the wrong dates — is one of the most common reasons courts send landlords back to square one.
The practical risk right now
Court backlogs were already a problem before this change. With every landlord in England now required to use Section 8, that pressure is only going to increase, and a rejected or mismatched claim means going through the whole notice period again from scratch. Getting the notice and the eventual possession claim right the first time matters more than it used to.
We handle the Section 8 notice and possession claim for you
Tell us about your tenancy and we'll draft a correctly grounded Section 8 notice — and the possession claim, if it comes to that — cross-checked so the two documents match.
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