RRA: Section 21 Is Gone: The Transitional Window and Why It Matters Now

This is the most time-sensitive post in the series, and we are going to get straight to it.

Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 is being abolished on 1 May 2026. After that date, no new Section 21 notice can be served, and any attempt to do so will not only be invalid but will expose the landlord to a civil penalty of up to £7,000. The no-fault eviction route that has underpinned student lettings for the better part of four decades will no longer exist.

But there is a narrow window that remains open right now. Landlords who serve a valid Section 21 notice before 1 May 2026 can still use it, subject to strict transitional deadlines. For landlords whose current tenants would not otherwise fall within the conditions for Ground 4A, that window is the difference between a manageable summer changeover in 2026 and a much more uncertain one. If this applies to you, the time to act is not next month. It is now.

The Rule

The transitional framework in Schedule 6 of the Renters' Rights Act is precise about what landlords can and cannot do, and the dates involved.

30 April 2026 is the last date on which a valid Section 21 notice can be served. A notice served on 1 May 2026 or later is automatically invalid under the new legislation. There are no exceptions and no grace period.

1 May 2026 is the commencement date. From this point, Section 21 is abolished entirely, the AST regime ends, and all remaining assured shorthold tenancies convert to assured periodic tenancies unless a valid Section 21 notice is already in play.

31 July 2026 is the backstop date for issuing court proceedings. Where a landlord has served a valid Section 21 notice before 1 May 2026 and the tenant has not vacated, the landlord must apply to the court for a possession order by the earlier of two dates: six months from the date the notice was served, or 31 July 2026. Whichever of those two dates arrives first is the deadline. After that point, the notice lapses and Section 21 proceedings cannot be pursued further.

The transitional provisions work as follows. Where a valid Section 21 notice was served before 1 May 2026, the tenancy remains an assured shorthold tenancy rather than converting to an assured periodic tenancy, and it continues to operate under the old legal framework until one of three things happens: the landlord obtains possession and the tenancy ends, the notice lapses, or a court rules the notice invalid. This is important because it means a tenancy with a pending valid Section 21 is, in effect, quarantined from the new regime for the duration of those proceedings.

There is one further limitation worth noting. Section 21 cannot be served until a tenancy has been running for at least four months. For any AST that began on or after 1 January 2026, the four-month threshold cannot be reached before 30 April 2026. Landlords with tenancies that started in early 2026 should check their start dates carefully before assuming Section 21 is available to them.

The New Norm

For most private landlords, the abolition of Section 21 is the headline reform of the entire Act, and rightly so. The ability to end a tenancy without giving a reason has been the defining feature of the AST regime since 1988. Entire business models have been built around it, including the student letting cycle, where Section 21 served as the reliable, procedurally simple mechanism through which landlords recovered possession at the end of each academic year, regardless of whether their tenants had done anything wrong.

Its removal changes the possession landscape fundamentally. From 1 May 2026, every possession action a landlord takes must be grounded in a specific statutory reason. For student HMO landlords, the primary replacement is Ground 4A, which we covered in detail in Post 2 of this series. But as we noted there and in Post 3, Ground 4A comes with qualifying conditions that Section 21 never had. The property must be an HMO. The tenants must be full-time students. The written statement must have been served at the right time. The tenancy must not have been signed more than six months before the start date. If any of those conditions are not met, Ground 4A is not available.

Section 21, by contrast, asked only that the procedural requirements around deposit protection, gas safety, electrical safety, the Energy Performance Certificate, and the How to Rent guide were properly met. If they were, a landlord could serve notice and recover possession without proving anything about the tenancy itself. That simplicity is gone, and it is not coming back.

For landlords whose current tenants are on ASTs that began well before May 2026, this transitional period is the last moment to use the tool that has worked reliably for decades. That does not mean landlords should serve Section 21 notices indiscriminately or against tenants they have no reason to move on. What it does mean is that where a landlord genuinely needs possession before or during the summer of 2026, and where the conditions for Ground 4A cannot be met for that particular tenancy, a Section 21 notice served now is the legally correct and practically sensible course of action.

The most common scenario we are seeing in our managed portfolio involves tenancies where the letting cycle operated on the traditional model: students signed in November or December 2025 for a tenancy starting in July or August 2026. Those tenancies were signed as ASTs before the new regime came into force, which means they are existing tenancies for the purposes of the transitional provisions. But many of them were signed more than six months before the start date, which, as we explained in Post 3, disqualifies them from Ground 4A for this cycle. For those properties, the Section 21 route is the only reliable path to possession in time for the summer changeover.

How We're Handling It

We have been clear with our landlords about this for some months, and we want to be equally clear here: at Student Housing we are actively advising all managed landlords whose 2025/26 tenancies fall outside the conditions for Ground 4A to consider serving Section 21 notices before the 30 April 2026 deadline.

This is not a recommendation we make lightly or casually. Section 21 has attracted significant controversy, and we understand why the government chose to abolish it. But the transitional window exists precisely because parliament recognised that landlords who have operated in good faith under the existing legal framework should not be left without a workable route to possession simply because the law changed mid-cycle. Using it is not exploiting a loophole. It is operating within the framework the legislation deliberately preserved.

The practical process is straightforward, but it must be done correctly. A Section 21 notice is only valid if every prescribed pre-condition has been met for the tenancy in question. Those pre-conditions include deposit protection in an approved scheme with the prescribed information served on the tenant, a valid gas safety certificate, a valid electrical installation condition report, a current Energy Performance Certificate, and the How to Rent guide having been provided at the start of the tenancy. If any of those steps were missed or cannot be evidenced, the Section 21 notice will fail. We are running a compliance check across all relevant managed properties before any notices are prepared, precisely because a defective notice is worse than no notice at all. It consumes time, creates false confidence, and leaves the landlord in a more difficult position than if they had identified the issue earlier.

Timing also matters. A notice served in early to mid-April gives more breathing room within the six-month proceedings window and reduces the pressure on the 31 July 2026 court deadline. A notice served on 29 April technically complies, but leaves almost no margin for anything to go wrong in the process. We are not waiting until the last week of April.

For landlords who are not managed by us but who are reading this and wondering whether a Section 21 notice is appropriate for their situation, our advice is to speak to your letting agent or a solicitor who specialises in residential possession now rather than after Easter. The deadline is real, the window is closing, and the consequences of missing it are a full year's exposure to the new periodic tenancy regime without the principal possession tool that the student HMO market depends on.

If you would like to talk to Student Housing about your current tenancies and whether Section 21 is the right step for your properties, contact your local branch in Lincoln, Nottingham, or Hull. We are having these conversations every day at the moment, and we would rather speak to you now than explain to you in May why the window has closed.

Student Housing | Renters' Rights Act Series — Post 4 of 8

Next in the series: Post 5 — The New Letting Calendar: Why We Think Tenancies Will Start in June

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.