Ask a letting agent in Bristol or Leeds what changed on their desk this year, and most won't mention a single headline reform. They'll mention paperwork. Since 1 May 2026, the notice that used to end a tenancy with two months and no explanation — Section 21 — simply stopped working. Landlords who serve one now get it handed back by the court, sometimes with a note pointing out that the form itself no longer exists in the system.
Section 21 had been part of the Housing Act 1988 for thirty-eight years. It let a landlord recover a property from an assured shorthold tenant without proving fault, which is why campaigners called it the "no-fault" or "revenge" eviction route — tenants who complained about a leaking roof or a broken boiler could, and sometimes did, find a Section 21 notice on the mat within weeks. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 closed that route for good from 1 May, and four and a half months on, the private rented sector is running on a genuinely different set of rules.
What actually happened on 1 May
Every assured shorthold tenancy in the private sector converted automatically into an assured tenancy at midnight. There was no opt-out and no transitional tenancy type landlords could choose instead. Any Section 21 notice served before 30 April could still run its course through the courts — some of those claims are still working through the system now, and Shelter's own guidance flags that a handful will likely drag into 2027 — but nothing new could be issued under the old form after that date.
Social housing got a longer runway. Registered providers can still use Section 21 until a commencement date in 2027 that hasn't been confirmed yet, so if your rental portfolio mixes private lets with a housing association property, don't assume the same clock applies to both.
Section 8 is now the only door
There was never a like-for-like replacement waiting in the wings. Instead, the government expanded the existing Section 8 grounds for possession, which means every eviction now has to fit a named box — and prove it. The two grounds landlords reach for most often, selling the property or moving a family member in, now require four months' notice instead of two, and there's a new twelve-month "protected period" at the start of a tenancy during which those grounds can't be used at all. Once you've served notice to sell, you're also barred from re-letting the property for sixteen months. That's not a typo, and it's the clause landlords complain about loudest.
Ground 8, the mandatory route for serious rent arrears, has been tightened too. The threshold moved from two months of arrears to three, and the notice period doubled from two weeks to four. HMO landlords letting to students got a genuinely new tool: Ground 4A allows notice to be served ahead of a new academic year, provided the property is a full HMO, every tenant is a student, and the notice — four months of it — expires between 1 June and 30 September. Miss that window and you're stuck waiting for the next one.
None of this is optional guidance. Every Section 8 notice now goes on the prescribed Form 3, and unlike the old accelerated Section 21 process, a contested Section 8 claim goes in front of a judge.
The court backlog landlords warned about is real
This is the part where the tidy policy story runs into the messy practical one. The National Residential Landlords Association flagged the risk months before commencement: possession claims under Section 8 are inherently more complex than the old accelerated Section 21 process, because a judge has to weigh evidence rather than rubber-stamp a notice period. County courts that were already stretched before May are now absorbing a heavier caseload with the same number of district judges. Landlords reporting six-month gaps between serving notice and actually regaining a property are not exaggerating — that's roughly the sum of a four-month notice period, a hearing date that has to be found in an already-booked list, and the weeks it takes bailiffs to enforce a warrant once an order is granted.
For a landlord with one buy-to-let and a mortgage to service, six months without rent while a mandatory notice period and a court date both run their course is not an abstract inconvenience — it's a five-figure hole in a year's cash flow, on top of legal costs if the case is contested.
What tenants have actually gained
The other side of this is harder to see because it shows up as things that don't happen rather than things that do. A tenant who reports damp and mould can no longer be served notice in apparent retaliation, because a landlord now has to point to an actual Section 8 ground — arrears, anti-social behaviour, breach of tenancy, sale, or a family member moving in — and be ready to defend it in front of a judge if challenged. Periodic tenancies are now the default for everyone, which ends the fixed-term trap where a tenant either signs another year or leaves; you can give two months' notice and go whenever suits you, without penalty. Rent increases are also more constrained: landlords can raise rent once every twelve months via a formal Section 13 notice, and a tenant who thinks an increase is above market rate can challenge it at a tribunal before it takes effect, not after.
Whether that adds up to genuinely more security depends on how the courts perform under the new caseload, and that verdict is still a year or two away.
What we'd actually do about it
If you're a landlord managing your own portfolio, get your paperwork audited now rather than when you need a notice served — a Section 8 claim lives or dies on the evidence trail, so rent statements, repair logs, and any written warnings need to be dated, filed, and easy to hand to a solicitor at short notice. Don't wait for a dispute to start building that file.
If you're planning to sell a let property in the next year, serve notice under Ground 1 as early as you can rather than leaving it until closer to a target completion date. Between the four-month notice period, the twelve-month protected period if the tenancy is new, and a possible wait for a court date if the tenant doesn't leave voluntarily, the gap between deciding to sell and actually getting vacant possession has stretched well beyond what most sale timelines assume.
For tenants, the practical change worth knowing is smaller than the headlines suggested: you're not automatically safer from eviction, but you can now ask why. If a notice lands without a ground attached, or with a ground that doesn't match your actual situation, that's worth a call to Shelter or a local advice centre before you start packing — a defective Section 8 notice, like a defective Section 21 notice before it, can be thrown out entirely.
The abolition of Section 21 was a bigger legal shift than most reforms to hit the private rented sector this decade. Whether it becomes a bigger practical one depends entirely on whether the courts get the funding the NRLA has been asking for since before the ban even started.