Two months' notice, and not a day of it wasted, if you serve it on the right date. The rule most London renters have wrong is that you must wait six months before you can go. You don't. Since 1 May 2026, when every assured shorthold tenancy in England converted into an assured periodic tenancy, there is no fixed term and no minimum term to sit out. Law firm briefings on the transition, including Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner's guide to the Renters' Rights Act 2025, are blunt about it: a tenant can serve a two-month notice from day one. What actually governs your leaving date is not how long you have lived there. It is the day your rent falls due.
Get that counting right and you can land your next move in November, December or January, when London's letting market is at its slowest, instead of being funnelled into a September renewal you never chose.
What changed on 1 May 2026
Three things matter for anyone planning a move.
Fixed terms are gone. Existing tenancies rolled over automatically into periodic ones with rent periods of a month or shorter. There was no need to sign anything, and no need for your landlord to re-protect the deposit or reissue the gas safety certificate. The old agreement and the new periodic tenancy are treated as one continuous tenancy.
Section 21 is finished. Trowers & Hamlins notes that 30 April 2026 was the last day a Section 21 notice could be served, and any notice served before that had to reach court by 31 July 2026. After that, a landlord needs a ground for possession under Section 8, with evidence, and notice periods that are commonly four months. Ground 1A, the sale ground, cannot be used in the first twelve months of a tenancy.
Rent review clauses are dead letters. Trowers & Hamlins is clear that a rent review clause in an existing agreement cannot be used for any increase after 1 May 2026. The only lawful route is a Section 13 notice on the new prescribed Form 4A, once a year, with at least two months' written notice.
Counting back from your rental period end date
Your notice must be in writing, must give at least two months, and must expire on the last day of a rental period. If rent is due on the 1st, your rental period runs from the 1st to the last day of the month, and your notice has to end on the last day of a month. If rent is due on the 15th, the period runs to the 14th of the following month, and that is the date your notice must land on.
The trap is arithmetic. Landlord forum Property118 works through the example: rent due on the 1st, notice given on 3 July, and the tenancy does not end on 2 September. It ends on 30 September, because the two months have to run out before the end of a rental period, not in the middle of one. Miss the rent due date by three days and you have bought yourself an extra month of rent.
So work backwards from the month you want to move.
| You want your tenancy to end on | Serve written notice by | What you are moving into |
|---|---|---|
| 30 November | 30 September | Late autumn, stock building, agents past the student rush |
| 31 December | 31 October | The quietest fortnight of the London year |
| 31 January | 30 November | New-year listings, landlords who sat empty over Christmas |
| 28 February | 31 December | Still soft, before the spring corporate moves start |
One complication worth flagging before you send anything. The Act amended Section 5 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, and the new subsection allows a shorter notice period where the landlord has agreed one in writing. There is a live argument among letting professionals, aired at length on Property118, about whether a one-month notice clause in your pre-May 2026 agreement counts as that written agreement. Do not gamble on it. If you want to leave on one month, ask your landlord to confirm the shorter period in writing, by email, before you serve.
If you rent as a joint tenancy, talk to your flatmates first. A single notice to quit can end the tenancy for everyone in the flat, which is a discovery best made in advance.
Where London rents are actually falling
The ONS Price Index of Private Rents for May 2026, published on 17 June, has the UK average private rent at £1,383, up 3.3% on the year, with England at £1,442. Within England, the North East had the fastest rent inflation at 5.9%. London had the slowest, at 2.0%. The capital that led the country through the 2022 to 2024 surge is now the weakest rental market in England. The ONS's July release, covering June 2026, keeps London bottom of the table at 2.2%.
That 2.0% is a London-wide average, and it hides a genuine split. The ONS's borough series shows central London softening while outer London keeps rising. Analysis of the borough data by London Relocation puts Camden down 4.0% year on year, Brent down 3.7%, Westminster down 3.6% and Kensington and Chelsea down 1.8% in the twelve months to April 2026, while Barking and Dagenham was up 6.1% and Sutton up 2.5%. Those borough splits come from a private compilation of the ONS series rather than from an ONS headline, so treat the individual percentages as indicative. The direction of travel is not in doubt: it matches Zoopla's June 2026 report, which describes rents falling outright in some cities while the cheapest areas see the fastest growth.
The price levels are official. The ONS puts the highest average monthly rent in the UK in Kensington and Chelsea, at £3,597 in April 2026, and its data for May shows flats and maisonettes as the cheapest UK property type at £1,351.
The practical read: if you have been priced out of zone 1 and 2 central boroughs, this is the first year in a decade when looking at them again is not absurd, particularly for a one-bedroom flat on a lease a landlord has struggled to fill. If you are moving outward for space, expect to be competing harder, not less, because that is where the growth is. Our rundown of the best areas for young professionals is a reasonable starting shortlist, but sanity-check every area against the current borough numbers rather than last year's reputation.
Competition has cooled, which is what gives you leverage in a viewing. Zoopla recorded an average of 5.6 enquiries per rental home in May 2026, down from a peak of 15.5 in 2022. Rightmove's end-of-2025 analysis had London averaging seven enquiries per property, against sixteen in the North West and Scotland, and average advertised rents in London falling 0.7% in the fourth quarter to £2,716. That fourth-quarter dip is the seasonal effect you are trying to catch.
The renewal offer that is now legally void
If an agent has emailed you a twelve-month renewal, they are offering something that no longer exists. No new fixed-term assured tenancy can be granted in England. You cannot be tied in, and you cannot be charged for the privilege: renewal fees have been prohibited since the Tenant Fees Act 2019 came into force.
What to write back, and keep it short:
"Thanks. As the tenancy converted to an assured periodic tenancy on 1 May 2026, I won't be signing a new fixed term, and I understand no fixed-term assured tenancy can now be granted. I'm happy to continue on the existing periodic terms. If you're proposing a rent increase, please serve it as a Section 13 notice on Form 4A."
That last line does real work. It moves the conversation from an informal "the rent's going up to £2,100, sign here" onto a statutory footing where you have rights and a deadline.
If a Section 13 notice arrives instead
The mechanics, per the government guidance and the prescribed forms published ahead of 1 May: rent can be raised once in any 52 weeks, on at least two months' written notice, using Form 4A. Anything else, an informal request, a rent review clause, an invitation to bid against another applicant, is not a lawful increase. Rental bidding above the advertised rent is prohibited under the Act.
If you think the proposed rent is above market, you refer it to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) before the increase takes effect, using Form MR1, the replacement for the old Rents1. Goodlord's guide for agents puts the application fee at £47; check the current figure on GOV.UK before you send, because it has changed with the new forms.
Three features of the reformed tribunal are worth knowing, because they change the risk calculation:
- The tribunal cannot set a rent higher than the figure your landlord proposed. The worst outcome is the increase you were already facing.
- Any increase applies from the date of the tribunal's decision and is not backdated, and in cases of genuine hardship the tribunal can delay it by up to two months.
- You keep paying your existing rent while the case is decided.
Solicitors at Helix Law make the point that a tenant who challenges on reasonable grounds is unlikely to face a costs order, but a challenge with no evidence behind it raises that risk. So bring evidence. Screenshot five genuinely comparable listings, same borough, same bedroom count, same condition, same month, and include their addresses. If your flat has an EPC of D or worse, single glazing or a broken extractor, say so in the referral: those are the terms a market rent is judged on, and the energy efficiency rules coming for rented homes give you a second angle on the same conversation.
What a move should cost you this winter
Before you commit to a new flat, check the money against what is now permitted. The deposit is capped at five weeks' rent where annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks where it is £50,000 or more. For tenancies starting on or after 1 May 2026, no more than one month's rent in advance can be required, and rent cannot be demanded at all before the tenancy is entered into. Referencing fees, admin fees and renewal fees are prohibited payments under the Tenant Fees Act 2019. Changes to a tenancy are capped at £50 unless the landlord evidences higher costs.
If an agent asks for six months up front to "strengthen" a weak reference, that request is now unlawful for a new tenancy. Offer a guarantor instead, or a rent-payment record pulled from your bank, which is increasingly how affordability gets evidenced. Open banking and rent-reporting tools have made that a normal conversation rather than an awkward one.
Budget for one uncomfortable overlap. Because your notice has to expire at the end of a rental period, and your new landlord will want you in when the flat is free, most winter movers pay a week or two of double rent. On a £2,000 flat that is roughly £500. Set against a December let secured below a September asking price, it is usually the cheaper mistake.
Serve the notice on the rent due date. Not after it.