RRA: The End of Fixed Terms: What Periodic Tenancies Mean for Student Lets

If you have been a student landlord in Lincoln, Nottingham, or Hull for any length of time, you will have built your business around a single legal instrument: the fixed-term assured shorthold tenancy. You signed it in the autumn, the students moved in the following summer, and it expired 51 weeks later, cleanly and predictably, at which point the cycle started again. The fixed term was not just a contract. It was the architecture of the entire student rental market.

From 1 May 2026, it no longer exists.

That is not an exaggeration or a simplification. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 abolishes the assured shorthold tenancy entirely, replacing it with something called the assured periodic tenancy. Every existing AST in England converts automatically on 1 May 2026. No paperwork is required to trigger the change, no agreement from either party, no new contract to sign. At midnight on 30 April, your tenants hold an AST. At midnight on 1 May, they hold an APT. The fixed term disappears, and the tenancy simply rolls forward, month to month, indefinitely.

This is the most fundamental change to residential tenancy law in England since the Housing Act 1988, and it affects every single property on our books. Understanding what it actually means in practice, rather than just what it says on paper, is the starting point for everything else in this series.

The Rule

The assured periodic tenancy works differently from an AST in one critical respect: it has no end date. Where an AST gave both parties certainty about when the tenancy would terminate, the APT is open-ended by design. The tenancy does not expire. It rolls forward automatically at the end of each rent period, which in most cases means monthly, unless something actively brings it to a close.

That something can come from either side, but the mechanics are very different depending on who is acting.

For tenants, the position is simple and powerful. From 1 May 2026, any tenant on a periodic tenancy can serve two months' written notice at any point, for any reason or no reason at all, and bring the tenancy to an end on the date that notice expires. There is no minimum period they must have been in the property. There is no fixed term to honour. There is no financial penalty for leaving. They can serve notice on the first day of the tenancy if they choose, and be gone two months later, entirely lawfully.

For landlords, the position is the inverse. The ability to end a tenancy without giving a reason, through a Section 21 notice, is abolished on the same date. Landlords can no longer recover possession simply because a fixed term has expired or because they want the property back for the next academic year. Every possession action must be grounded in one of the statutory possession grounds under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988, as amended by the Act. Some of those grounds are mandatory, meaning the court must grant possession if the ground is proven. Others are discretionary, meaning the court may grant possession but is not required to. Either way, the landlord must prove something. The era of unilateral, no-fault possession is over.

There is one administrative obligation that flows directly from the conversion that landlords need to be aware of. For existing tenancies converting on 1 May 2026, landlords are required to provide each named tenant with a government-produced information sheet explaining the changes to their tenancy before 31 May 2026. This is a hard deadline. For any new tenancies entered into after 1 May 2026, landlords must provide a written statement of terms before the tenancy is signed. The written statement must include the rent, the rent payment dates, the notice period, and a confirmation that the landlord can only end the tenancy through a court order on specific grounds. These are not optional extras. Failure to comply with the information requirements is a regulatory breach under the Act.

Note: We've already provided all tenants with the new mandatory notices and information required under the act. For HMO's we're able to rely on eviction ground 4a for student tenants, so notice can be provided to the existing tenants each year to vacate before the new tenants take occupancy.

The New Norm

What does this mean in practice for a landlord with a group of students in a three-bedroom HMO in Lincoln or a shared house in Lenton?

The most immediate change is psychological. For the past decade, student landlords have been able to plan their year around a guaranteed end date. Students moved out in June or July, the property was cleaned and re-occupied, the new group moved in for the following academic year. The fixed term provided a natural rhythm that aligned the business of letting with the academic calendar. That rhythm no longer has any legal foundation.

Under the periodic tenancy model, students do not leave because the contract says they have to. They leave because they choose to. That has always been true in practice, of course: most students leave at the end of the academic year because that is what makes sense for them, not because a clause in their tenancy agreement compels them. But the legal backstop that protected landlords against students who chose to stay, or students who chose to leave early, is gone. What replaces it, for better or worse, is the lived experience of the tenancy itself.

The risk of early departure is real. Under the old AST model, a student who decided in February that they wanted to leave by April was, in most cases, either locked in until the end of the fixed term or liable for rent for the remainder of it. Under the periodic model, that student can serve two months' notice in February and vacate in April without any financial consequence. The landlord is left with a vacant property in one of the quietest months of the student letting calendar, at a point where replacing tenants for the remainder of the academic year is genuinely difficult.

The risk of late departure is also real, though it operates differently. Under the old model, a landlord who needed possession by a specific date to re-let to the incoming group could rely on the fixed term end date, backed up by a Section 21 notice if needed. Under the new model, possession requires a valid Section 8 notice on a statutory ground, which takes time to prepare, time to serve, and time to enforce through the courts if contested. The courts are not currently fast, and there is no guarantee they will be faster once the new regime beds in.

Section 8, Ground 4a allows us to serve a 4 month notice on student tenants requesting they vacate the property between June and September so that new students are able to move into the property.

None of this means the student letting market is about to collapse. But it does mean that the comfortable certainty that landlords have operated with for thirty-five years has gone, and the market will take time to find its new equilibrium.

How We're Handling It

At Student Housing, we have been preparing for this transition for the better part of a year, and our approach is built on two foundations: documentation and communication.

On documentation, we have comprehensively updated our standard tenancy agreement to reflect the new periodic tenancy model. Every new tenancy we create from 1 May 2026 will be an assured periodic tenancy from the outset, incorporating the mandatory written statement of terms as required by the Act. This includes the correct rent period, the two-month tenant notice provision, the Ground 4A written statement for all qualifying HMO properties, and the confirmation of the landlord's possession route. We have also reviewed our management agreement to ensure it accurately reflects our obligations and those of our landlords under the new framework - We'll be sending out new management agreements to landlords shortly.

For existing tenancies converting on 1 May 2026, we are coordinating the delivery of the government information sheet to all named tenants ahead of the 31 May deadline. This is something we are handling on behalf of all our managed landlords. If you are a Student Housing managed landlord and you have not heard from your branch about this process, please contact us now so we can make sure your properties are covered before the deadline passes.

On communication, we are actively talking to all our landlords about what the transition means for their specific properties. The practical implications vary depending on when tenancies were signed, whether the property qualifies as an HMO, and what the landlord's plans are for the next letting cycle. A one-size approach does not work here, and we are not applying one. If you have questions about a specific property, we want to hear from you.

We also want to be direct about our broader position on this change. The periodic tenancy model is not, in our view, the existential threat to student lettings that some in the sector have described it as. The vast majority of students will continue to leave at the end of the academic year because that is what suits them, regardless of what their contract says. The students who were at risk of leaving early under the new model were, in most cases, students who were unhappy with their property or their landlord. The Act has given those students the legal freedom to act on that unhappiness. The appropriate response is not to lament the change but to ensure that the properties we manage do not give tenants a reason to want to leave.

That has always been our philosophy. What has changed is that it is now a commercial necessity as well as a professional standard.

Student Housing | Renters' Rights Act Series — Post 1 of 8
Next in the series: Post 2 — Ground 4A Explained: The New Possession Right for Student HMOs

Student Housing manages student properties across Lincoln, Nottingham, and Hull. This post is part of our ongoing series on the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and is written for general informational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice. Landlords with specific questions about their circumstances should seek independent legal guidance.