What actually happened on 1 May, and what expired on 31 July
If your landlord served a Section 21 notice in April and has done nothing since, that piece of paper is now worthless. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025 and the abolition of Section 21 commenced on 1 May 2026. The Act set a hard cut-off for the old regime: any Section 21 notice served before commencement had to reach court as issued possession proceedings by 31 July 2026. After that date it is unenforceable, and the landlord has to start again under Section 8.
That matters because Section 8 is a different animal. Every claim now has to name a statutory ground, and every ground has conditions the landlord must prove. Ministry of Justice figures for April to June 2026 show 23,635 landlord possession claims in England and Wales, up 6% on the same quarter in 2025, with London courts handling 7,793 of them, roughly a third of the national total. So the volume has not collapsed. What has changed is that each of those claims is now contestable on its facts.
Almost all existing assured shorthold tenancies converted automatically into assured periodic tenancies on 1 May. Your fixed term has gone, and with it the landlord's ability to end the tenancy without a reason. One more date worth knowing: landlords had to give every tenant a copy of "The Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026" by 31 May 2026, with a penalty of up to £7,000 for missing it. If you never received one, that tells you something about how carefully the rest of the paperwork was handled.
The grounds London landlords are actually using
The notice periods below come from the explanatory notes to the Renters' Rights Act 2025 on legislation.gov.uk, which set them out ground by ground. Some solicitors' blogs still list two months for Grounds 1 and 1A, carried over from the old Schedule 2. That is wrong under the Act as commenced, and if an agent quotes you two months, they are working from an out-of-date crib sheet.
| Ground | What the landlord must show | Notice | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | They, or a parent, grandparent, sibling, child or grandchild, will occupy the flat as their only or principal home | 4 months | Mandatory |
| 1A | They intend to sell the property on the open market | 4 months | Mandatory |
| 6 / 6A | Redevelopment, or possession needed to comply with enforcement action | 4 months | Mandatory |
| 8 | At least 3 months' arrears (13 weeks if rent is weekly or fortnightly) at service and at the hearing | 4 weeks | Mandatory |
| 10 | Some rent unpaid, below the Ground 8 threshold | 4 weeks | Discretionary |
| 11 | Persistent late payment, even if nothing is owed today | 4 weeks | Discretionary |
| 12 | Breach of a term of the tenancy agreement | 2 weeks | Discretionary |
| 9 | Suitable alternative accommodation offered | 2 months | Discretionary |
Mandatory means the court must order possession if the ground is proved. Discretionary means the judge decides whether possession is reasonable, and can suspend the order on conditions. Grounds 7A and 14, the anti-social behaviour grounds, sit outside the standard notice table and can move to court very fast.
One statistic worth holding in your head when an agent sounds confident: Goodlord's State of the Letting Industry report 2025 found that 43% of sole agents had never served a Section 8 notice at all.
Ground 1: the landlord or family is moving in
The old requirement that the landlord had to warn you at the start of the tenancy that they might use Ground 1 has been abolished. In exchange, tenants got two protections. First, four months' notice. Second, a notice on Ground 1 cannot expire during the first 12 months of the tenancy. Shelter's legal guidance is explicit that the clock runs from when the tenancy was first granted, not from the date it converted into an assured tenancy in May, which means a tenancy that started in 2021 has no protected period left, and one that started in November 2025 cannot be ended on Ground 1 or 1A before November 2026.
"Family member" is defined, not vague: parent, grandparent, sibling, child or grandchild, including half relations. A cousin does not count. Neither does a friend who needs somewhere to stay. Where there are joint landlords, only one of them needs to require the flat.
Ground 1A: the flat is being sold
Ground 1A is new, mandatory, and the one most London tenants will meet. Four months' notice, same 12-month protected period, and the landlord must intend to sell on the open market.
The teeth are in the restricted period. Under the new section 16M of the Housing Act 1988, the restriction starts on the day the Section 8 notice specifying Ground 1A is served and runs until 12 months after the date the notice gave as the earliest day proceedings could begin. During that window the landlord (and any agent acting for them) must not let the flat on a tenancy of 21 years or less, must not grant a licence for money, and must not market it for either. Short lets are caught. So is a quiet arrangement with a friend paying rent.
Get the notice date and the "earliest proceedings" date written down now, and work out when that 12 months ends. That single calculation is what makes the ground enforceable later.
Penalties differ depending on how far the landlord went. GOV.UK guidance and the Act between them provide a civil penalty of up to £7,000 for marketing or re-letting after serving a Ground 1A notice, rising to a maximum of £40,000, or prosecution, where possession was actually obtained through the court. Rent repayment orders now run to a maximum of two years' rent rather than one.
The arrears grounds
The mandatory arrears threshold went up from two months to three (13 weeks where rent is paid weekly or fortnightly), and the notice period doubled from two weeks to four. The three months must exist both on the day the notice is served and on the day of the hearing. That second limb is the practical lever: if you can get arrears below three months' worth before the hearing, Ground 8 fails, and the landlord is left arguing the discretionary grounds where a judge weighs reasonableness.
There is also a Universal Credit carve-out. Where rent is unpaid only because the housing element of a Universal Credit award has not yet landed, that amount is ignored in the arrears calculation. If a DWP delay pushed you over the line, say so in writing and keep the journal entries.
If the arrears grew out of a rent rise you never agreed to, note that increases now come once every 12 months on two months' written notice, and there is a route to challenge them: see how to challenge a London rent increase at the tribunal.
What a defective notice looks like
Check these in order. Any one of them can sink a claim.
- The wrong notice entirely. A Section 21 or Form 6A served on or after 1 May 2026 is void. There is no saving it.
- A short notice period. Four months means four months from service, not from the first of the month, and not four months from when the agent phoned you.
- Expiry inside the first 12 months. Fatal to Grounds 1 and 1A.
- No ground specified, or the wrong one. "The landlord requires the property" is not a ground. Ask which numbered ground and paragraph is relied on.
- Ground 8 served on two months' arrears. Still common, because the old threshold is muscle memory.
- A notice signed by an agent with no authority stated, or one that gives no landlord name and address. You are entitled to the landlord's name and address in writing under section 48 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.
- Service you can date-stamp differently. Photograph the envelope, the postmark and the doormat. If a notice was hand-delivered, note the time.
Send the agent one email, and keep it short: "Please confirm in writing which Section 8 ground is relied on, the date and method of service of the notice, the date the tenancy began, and the landlord's full name and address." Reasonable requests, awkward answers.
A fortnight-by-fortnight plan
Fortnight one. Photograph or scan the notice. Diarise the expiry date and the restricted period end date. Check your tenancy start date against the 12-month protected period. Confirm your deposit is still in a scheme, and re-read what you actually signed: understanding tenancy agreements is the place to start if the clauses are opaque.
Fortnight two. Send the email above. Get free advice on the notice from Shelter, Citizens Advice or your borough's housing options team, and register with the council now rather than at the end. Keep paying rent, in full, on time. Arrears turn a weak case into a strong one.
Fortnights three and four. Decide whether you are leaving on the expiry date or waiting for a court order. There is no legal obligation to go on the day a notice expires, and the notice itself does not end your tenancy. The MoJ's figures for April to June 2026 put the median time from claim to landlord repossession at 27.1 weeks, so a four-month notice plus a contested claim is not a short process. Weigh that against your borough's homelessness assessment, which can treat a premature departure unhelpfully.
Months two to four. Start viewings early, and budget properly. Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019 the deposit cap is five weeks' rent where annual rent is under £50,000, and the Renters' Rights Act now limits rent in advance to one month, which changes what agents can ask for at the front end: one month upfront sets out the limits. Ask every agent whether the flat has been let in the past 12 months and whether any previous tenancy ended on Ground 1 or 1A.
If the flat reappears on Rightmove
This is the enforcement scenario the Act was drafted for, and it is easy to act on.
Screenshot the listing with the URL and date visible. Screenshot the price, the photographs (compare them to your own inventory shots) and the agent's name. Do the same on OpenRent, SpareRoom, Zoopla and Airbnb, since marketing for short lets is caught too. Then check the Land Registry title for a sale that never completed: a title with the same proprietor and no recent transfer is useful evidence that the stated intention to sell was not genuine.
Report it to the environmental health or private sector housing team at the borough council, in writing, with your notice, your dates and the screenshots attached. Councils impose the civil penalties, and the Act sets the criminal standard of proof for the higher ones, which is why dated evidence matters more than indignation. Ask separately about a rent repayment order.
Where landlords are heading for the exit
The Ministry of Justice publishes possession claim rates per 100,000 households by tenure and local authority, which is the closest thing to a map of landlord exits. London boroughs accounted for eight of the ten local authorities with the highest rate of private landlord possession claims in both the January to March and April to June quarters of 2026.
The concentration is in the outer east and north. In the January to March quarter, Barking and Dagenham had the highest private landlord claim rate in England and Wales at 671 per 100,000 households owned by a private landlord, followed by Newham at 515 and Enfield at 478. Barking and Dagenham was still top of the table for private landlord repossessions in the April to June quarter, at 352 per 100,000.
Two caveats. These rates cover claims of all kinds, including arrears, so they measure pressure rather than pure landlord withdrawal. And the April to June quarter contains only two months of post-Act activity, which the MoJ itself flags: it says it is not clear whether the falls in some measures can be attributed to the start of the Renters' Rights Act. Treat the borough rankings as a signal about where landlords are under strain, and where a Ground 1A notice is most likely to land on your mat this year.