Section 21 is gone. One date can still void the notice you served.

Issue 004

Two months ago Section 21 still existed. Today it does not. From 1 May you cannot serve a new one, every new tenancy is periodic, and the old “no fault” route is closed.

But there is a loose end that catches people out, and it has a hard date on it.

If you served a valid Section 21 before 1 May, it did not vanish on that date. It still works. There is one condition. You have to apply to the court for a possession order by 31 July 2026.

Miss that date and the notice is dead. It does not matter that it had months left to run. It does not matter that it was served correctly. On 1 August it is worth nothing, and you are back to square one under the new Section 8 rules I wrote about in Issue 003.

The second clock is today’s. If you have not handed every tenant the Renters’ Rights Act Information Sheet 2026, that was due by 31 May. It is a five minute job and the fine for skipping it is not worth it. Do it before you read the rest of this.

A lot of landlords served a Section 21 in March or April, partly to keep the option open before the door shut. Fair enough. The trap is treating that notice as money in the bank.

It is not. The government’s own guidance, “Giving notice of possession to tenants before 1 May 2026” on gov.uk, sets it out plainly: a Section 21 served before 1 May stays valid, but court possession proceedings have to be started no later than 31 July 2026. If the earliest possession date on your notice falls on or after 1 August, it is already invalid for going to court. After 31 July, the Section 21 route is closed for good.

And here is the part people underestimate. Every possession claim now needs a court hearing, and the backlog is already running at eight to twelve weeks in many areas. That is the wait to get into court, before anything is decided. Filing on 30 July is legal. It is also leaving yourself no margin at all.

Three checks, ten minutes.

One. Do you have a live Section 21 served before 1 May on a tenant who is still in the property? If no, you can stop here.

Two. If yes, do you still actually want possession? If the tenant has started paying, or is leaving anyway, you may not need the notice at all. Let it lapse and save yourself the court fee.

Three. If yes and you do want the property back, get the application in now, not in July. Check the basics first: deposit protected before the notice, the notice itself served correctly, your paperwork in order. A court will throw out a claim on a technicality, and you cannot re-serve a Section 21 to fix it any more.

After 31 July, possession means Section 8 and a named ground. Slower, more expensive, more contested. Issue 003 covered what that looks like.

Here is the kind of situation this catches, drawn from how these play out rather than one named tenant.

A landlord serves a valid Section 21 in the middle of April on a tenant who has gone quiet, missed a couple of months, stopped answering the phone. The notice is clean. The landlord files it away and assumes there is time.

There is not as much as it looks. The tenant is still there in late May. If that landlord waits until the notice period feels comfortable and aims for a July court application, they are betting the property on a court system that is already backed up, with a hard stop on 31 July and no second chances if anything on the paperwork is wrong.

The right move is boring. Confirm the deposit was protected before the notice went out, confirm service, and file the court application now while there is room to fix a problem if one shows up. The deadline does not care how good your reason for waiting was.

If you served a Section 21 before 1 May and you want the property back, your real deadline is not the notice period. It is 31 July 2026 to be in front of a court. Treat anything later than mid June as cutting it fine. After that, the door is shut and the only way through is Section 8.

If this was useful, forward it to one landlord you know. If anything was wrong or unclear, hit reply. I read every email.

See you next Sunday.

Eddie Sisman

working landlord

The Landlord Standard. A weekly UK landlord newsletter. Published Sunday mornings. Plain-English commentary, not legal advice. For specific situations, speak to a solicitor.