A landlord in Croydon served a Section 21 notice on a tenant in April, planning to sell before the market cooled further. By the time the paperwork reached court in August, the notice was worthless — the 31 July 2026 deadline for using an old Section 21 notice had already passed, and Section 21 itself no longer exists. That landlord now has to start again under Section 8, and so does every other London landlord who hasn’t yet worked out what replaced it.
Why This Changed, and What’s Actually Gone
Section 21 “no-fault” eviction was abolished across England from 1 May 2026, and the last date a new Section 21 notice could legally be served was 30 April 2026. Landlords who served a valid notice before that date had until 31 July 2026 to get court proceedings underway using it — that window has now closed. The accelerated possession procedure, the no-hearing court route that made Section 21 fast, ceased at the same time. There is no version of “no reason needed” possession left in the private rented sector.
Every possession claim now runs through Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988, using a set of statutory grounds that the Renters’ Rights Act expanded and, in several places, deliberately toughened. Landlords who assumed “strengthened Section 8 grounds” meant a like-for-like replacement for Section 21 are about to discover the process is genuinely slower and requires proving a specific reason, not just serving notice and waiting.
The Grounds That Replace Section 21
Every Section 8 ground falls into one of two categories, and the difference determines whether you have a real case or a discretionary one a judge can simply decline.
| Ground type | What it means | Typical notice period |
|---|---|---|
| Mandatory (e.g. rent arrears, sale, landlord/family moving in, criminal behaviour) | Court must grant possession if the ground is proven — no judicial discretion | 2 weeks to 3 months, depending on the specific ground |
| Discretionary (e.g. persistent minor arrears, breach of tenancy terms, nuisance) | Court weighs whether possession is reasonable even once the ground is proven | Typically 2 to 4 weeks |
A mandatory ground sounds like the safer bet, and for a genuine case it usually is — but “mandatory” only helps if you can prove it at the hearing, not just assert it in the notice. Get a mandatory ground’s conditions wrong and the claim doesn’t become discretionary; it simply fails, and you’re back to serving notice again with the clock reset.
Ground 8: Rent Arrears, and Why the Threshold Just Got Harder to Meet
Ground 8 is the mandatory route for serious rent arrears, and it’s tightened in a way that catches landlords who remember the old rules. The threshold has risen from two months’ rent owed to three, and — this is the part that trips people up — the tenant must still owe three months’ rent at the date of the court hearing, not just at the date you served notice. A tenant who pays down arrears to just under the threshold before the hearing date defeats a Ground 8 claim entirely, however strong it looked when notice was served.
The notice period itself has also doubled, from two weeks to four. For a landlord relying on Ground 8, that means the practical sequence is: three full months of arrears accumulate, a four-week notice period runs, and only then can a court application follow — call it a minimum of four months before a hearing is even listed, assuming arrears don’t dip below the line in the meantime. If you’re a tenant reading this rather than a landlord, that repayment-before-hearing route is real leverage worth knowing about, not just a landlord’s problem.
A meaningful share of arrears cases involve a Universal Credit housing element that’s delayed rather than a tenant who simply isn’t paying — worth checking before treating every arrears case as straightforwardly wilful. Landlords should also watch the calendar closely once the threshold is first crossed: waiting an extra month “to be sure” before serving notice only pushes the whole timeline back by the same amount, since nothing about Ground 8 rewards delay.
Selling or Moving In: The Grounds With the Longest Notice
Grounds 1, 1A and 6 cover a landlord or their close family moving into the property, or the landlord selling it, and both carry a three-month notice period rather than the shorter windows attached to arrears or conduct grounds. There’s a second, separate restriction worth not confusing with the notice period: none of these grounds can be used until the tenancy itself has run for at least twelve months, regardless of when notice is served within that window.
In practice, that means a landlord can’t let a flat in January and serve a sale-ground notice in March because a buyer has suddenly appeared — the twelve-month floor applies however genuine the sale is. This is one of the more significant behavioural shifts the Act is designed to force: landlords letting with a short-term exit already half-planned now have to commit to a full year before that exit becomes a legal option, which changes the calculation for anyone treating a rental as a holding position between sales.
A landlord who lets a flat at month zero and finds a genuine buyer needing vacant possession at month eight has no legal route to the sale ground at all — the tenancy simply hasn’t run long enough, and no amount of urgency on the buyer’s side changes that. The realistic options are renegotiating the sale timeline with the buyer, selling with the tenant in situ to a landlord willing to take on the tenancy, or waiting out the remaining months before serving notice at all.
Antisocial Behaviour and Other Fast-Track Grounds
Not every ground moves slowly. Antisocial behaviour and certain criminal conduct grounds carry notice periods as short as two weeks, reflecting Parliament’s view that genuine ASB cases shouldn’t be dragged out by the same timelines built for a straightforward sale. These grounds are mandatory in the most serious cases and discretionary in less clear-cut ones, so the speed advantage only really applies once you can evidence the conduct properly — police reports, witness statements, a documented pattern rather than a single disputed incident.
Landlords sometimes reach for an ASB ground because it’s faster, when the actual situation is better evidenced as a straightforward tenancy breach instead. Choosing the wrong ground doesn’t just risk losing at the hearing; it can mean re-serving notice under the correct one and losing the weeks you thought you’d saved.
What Happens After You Serve Notice: The Real Court Timeline
Serving notice is the start of the process, not close to the end of it. Ministry of Justice figures for the first quarter of 2026 put the median time from a landlord’s possession claim to a court order at around eight weeks — but the median from claim to actual repossession sits at roughly 26 weeks, meaning the gap after the order is granted, waiting for enforcement, typically runs longer than the court stage that precedes it. London landlords should expect to sit inside that average rather than beat it: possession claims remain more heavily concentrated in London than anywhere else in England and Wales, and court capacity hasn’t scaled with the volume.
Budget for six months from a clean notice to an actual vacant property, and treat anything faster as a pleasant surprise rather than the plan. Landlords who priced a sale or a family move-in around a two-month possession timeline — the old Section 21 expectation — are the ones most exposed to this change, since the maths on a sale falls apart quickly if the property sits mid-eviction for two extra quarters.
If You Already Served a Section 21 Notice
If your Section 21 notice predates 1 May 2026 and you haven’t already issued court proceedings, it is now dead. There is no extension and no fallback accelerated route — the 31 July 2026 cut-off was firm, and the procedure it relied on no longer operates. The only path forward is serving a fresh notice under whichever Section 8 ground fits your situation, starting the notice-period clock again from today.
One transition-period trap is worth flagging directly: some letting agents, out of habit, are still reaching for old Section 21 template paperwork when asked to serve notice. Confirm explicitly with your agent or solicitor that you’re being served the correct, current Section 8 prescribed form for the specific ground you’re relying on, not a leftover template repurposed after the fact — a wrongly formatted notice restarts the clock just as surely as no notice at all. The wider compliance picture around the Act — deposits, rent increases, periodic tenancies — sits in our summary of Renters’ Rights Act obligations for London landlords.
What Landlords Should Do Now
- Check whether you’re relying on a Section 21 notice served before 1 May 2026 — if court proceedings weren’t issued by 31 July 2026, that notice can no longer be used and a fresh Section 8 notice is needed instead.
- Identify the specific ground that genuinely matches your situation before serving anything; a mandatory ground used incorrectly fails outright rather than falling back to discretionary.
- If rent arrears are the issue, confirm the three-month threshold is met now and build in enough margin that a partial payment before the hearing doesn’t tip the case below it.
- For a sale or family move-in, check the tenancy has genuinely run twelve months before serving notice — there’s no way to shortcut this restriction.
- Rebuild your possession timeline around roughly six months from notice to vacant property, not the two-to-three months Section 21 previously allowed, and reprice any sale or relet plans accordingly.
Compliant Landlords, Confident Tenancies — FTR London
Renters: if you’re facing a Section 8 notice, check which ground it cites and whether the landlord has actually met its conditions — a Ground 8 arrears notice you can pay down before the hearing, or a sale-ground notice served before your tenancy hit twelve months, may not hold up. Browse your next London rental on FTR London with a clearer sense of what genuine possession grounds actually require.
Landlords: getting a possession ground right the first time is now the difference between a six-month process and a much longer one spent re-serving notice. List your property on FTR London, and pair sound day-to-day management with the compliance detail covered in our London landlord tax guide, our notes on HMO licensing rules for London landlords, and our comparison of short let vs long let for London landlords.
