MV/N-020 · Possession
Section 21 is gone. What actually changed on 1 May
The headline is that no-fault eviction has ended. The more useful point for anyone holding property is that every tenancy in the country changed shape on the same morning.
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025. The operative dates followed: 30 April 2026 was the last day a section 21 notice could lawfully be served, and on 1 May 2026 section 21 ceased to exist.
On the same date, existing and new assured shorthold tenancies converted automatically to assured periodic tenancies. No document was signed and no notice was required. The conversion happened by operation of law.
The asymmetry is the point
Under the old regime a fixed term bound both parties. Under an assured periodic tenancy the tenant may leave on two months' notice while the landlord must establish a ground and obtain an order. For portfolio owners this changes the planning assumption behind void periods, refurbishment schedules and sale timetables.
It also removes the practice, common and never sound, of serving a section 21 notice alongside arrears correspondence as leverage. That option no longer exists. Where a landlord wants possession for arrears, the arrears grounds are the only route, and they must be properly made out.
What did not change
Rent remains a contractual debt. The obligation to pay it, the ability to sue for it, and the six-year limitation period under the Limitation Act 1980 are untouched. The Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims still governs how a demand must be made before proceedings.
This is worth stating plainly because a good deal of commentary has treated the Act as though it removed a landlord's remedies. It did not. It removed one route to possession and tightened another. The money claim sits where it always sat.
The documents that now matter
- The tenancy as converted, not the tenancy as originally drafted. Terms that depended on a fixed term or on section 21 no longer operate as intended.
- A rent account that can be reconciled to the day, because possession now turns on the state of the arrears at two separate dates.
- Evidence of what was demanded, when, and how it was served — the foundation of any ground the court has discretion over.
Landlords who kept careful records are largely unaffected in substance. Those who relied on section 21 to avoid ever proving anything are in a materially different position, and the first arrears case is not the moment to discover it.