How a Tenancy Ends Now Section 21 Is Gone: Every Lawful Route

How a Tenancy Ends Now Section 21 Is Gone: Every Lawful Route

An assured tenancy in England now ends in one of three ways: the tenant serves a valid notice to quit, the landlord and tenant agree a surrender, or the court makes a possession order on a Section 8 ground. Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026, and a landlord's notice to quit has no effect.

This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Landlords should seek independent legal advice for their specific circumstances. It describes the position in England.

The three routes at a glance

Everything else that used to end a tenancy has either been abolished or never applied to assured tenancies in the first place. That is the structural change, and it is easy to understate: a landlord acting alone can no longer bring a tenancy to an end at all. A landlord acting alone can only start a process that a court finishes.

What no longer works

Five routes are worth naming, because each is still being attempted.

Section 21. Repealed for private assured tenancies from 1 May 2026. There is no no-fault route and no accelerated procedure.

A landlord's notice to quit. Section 5(1) of the Housing Act 1988 has long provided that a landlord cannot end an assured tenancy by notice to quit, and that remains the position. What has changed is that purporting to do so is now a breach under section 16E(1)(b) of the 1988 Act.

Fixed terms and break clauses. Section 4A of the 1988 Act renders any term purporting to create a fixed term of no effect, so there is no term for a break clause to break. Purporting to let for a fixed term is a breach under section 16E(1)(a).

Forfeiture. Forfeiture has never been available against an assured tenancy, because section 5(1) permits the landlord to end it only by obtaining a court order. A forfeiture clause in a tenancy agreement does not change this.

Oral termination. Telling a tenant the tenancy is over, or that they must leave, is a breach under section 16E(1)(c). Serving a document that purports to be a possession notice but is not a valid Section 8 notice is a breach under section 16E(1)(d).

Each of these breaches carries a civil penalty of up to £7,000, with published starting points between £3,000 and £6,000. Where the conduct continues more than 28 days after a penalty, or is repeated within five years, it becomes an offence under section 16J(3) with a maximum of £40,000. The civil penalties reference table sets out the figures.

Route one: the tenant serves notice

The tenant retains the ability to end the tenancy unilaterally, and this is now the most common way a tenancy ends.

The notice must be in writing, must give at least two months, and must expire at the end of a period of the tenancy. A landlord may agree in writing to a shorter period, but cannot impose a longer one. Any term in the tenancy agreement that binds the tenant as to the means of giving written notice is of no effect, so a clause requiring recorded delivery does not invalidate an email.

There is no minimum term the tenant must serve first. A tenant can give notice in week one. This is the practical trade the Act made: the landlord lost the no-fault route and the tenant gained the ability to leave on two months' notice at any point. Our article on what happens when a tenant gives notice covers validity and the aftermath in detail.

Route two: surrender

Surrender is the consensual route, and it is the one most landlords underuse.

Express surrender is a written agreement between landlord and tenant that the tenancy ends on an agreed date, made by deed. Both parties sign, both signatures are witnessed, and the effect is that future obligations fall away from the agreed date.

Surrender by operation of law, sometimes called implied surrender, happens where the conduct of both parties is inconsistent with the tenancy continuing. The classic example is the tenant handing back the keys and the landlord accepting them and re-letting. The requirement is unequivocal conduct on both sides, which is why a landlord who simply changes the locks on an empty property has not achieved a surrender: the tenant's conduct may be equivocal, and the landlord's own conduct cannot supply the missing half.

Surrender is worth considering wherever both parties want the same outcome. It avoids the four month notice periods on the moving and selling grounds, and it avoids the restricted period that follows a Ground 1 or Ground 1A notice entirely, because that period only runs where the landlord has relied on the ground. A landlord who negotiates a surrender rather than serving a sale ground notice is not locked out of the market afterwards.

The risk sits in the informal version. Surrender by operation of law is often argued about after the event, because the parties did not think they were doing anything legally significant at the time. A landlord who accepts keys, re-lets, and then tries to claim rent for the remainder of a notice period will usually be met with the argument that their own conduct surrendered the tenancy. A tenant who leaves and later argues they never surrendered will point to possessions still in the property. Both problems disappear if the surrender is written down and dated, which takes minutes.

Route three: possession order on a Section 8 ground

This is the contested route, and it has four stages.

1. Serve a valid notice. Form 3A is prescribed for every Section 8 notice served on or after 1 May 2026. The notice period depends on the grounds cited, ranging from none to four months, as set out in our table of notice periods for every ground.
2. Wait for the notice to expire. Proceedings cannot begin before the date specified, and cannot begin more than 12 months after the notice was served.
3. Issue a claim and obtain an order. The court decides whether the ground is made out. Mandatory grounds require an order if proved and undefended; discretionary grounds require the court to be satisfied it is reasonable.
4. Enforce if necessary. A possession order usually gives 14 days, extendable to 42 days for exceptional hardship under section 89 of the Housing Act 1980. If the tenant does not leave, the landlord applies for a warrant and a county court bailiff or a High Court enforcement officer executes it.

The tenancy does not end when the order is made. It ends when possession is actually given up or taken under a warrant. A landlord who takes possession between the order date and lawful enforcement is acting outside the process.

What about the death of the tenant?

Death does not automatically end the tenancy, which surprises most landlords.

Where a sole periodic assured tenant dies, section 17 of the Housing Act 1988 may pass the tenancy to a successor, generally a spouse or partner occupying the property as their only or principal home immediately before the death, provided the deceased was not themselves a successor. Where no statutory succession applies, the tenancy does not vanish. It devolves under the will or intestacy, and the landlord's route is Ground 7, a mandatory ground carrying two months' notice.

Ground 7 has a timing trap that catches landlords who wait. Proceedings must be begun within 12 months of the death, or of the date the landlord became aware of it. Serving notice within that window is not enough; the claim must be issued, following Osada v Shepping [2000] 2 EGLR 38.

Where does abandonment fit?

Nowhere, as a standalone route. There is no lawful procedure allowing a landlord to declare a tenancy ended because the property appears empty.

The abandonment procedure in Part 3 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which would have allowed exactly that, was never brought into force and was repealed on 27 December 2025 by section 59 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025. A great deal of published guidance still describes an "abandonment notice" as a way to recover a property without going to court. That was never the law in England and now cannot become it. Our article on handling an apparently abandoned propertysets out what a landlord can actually do.

Which grounds are actually available?

Schedule 2 now contains 13 mandatory grounds and 11 discretionary ones, but most landlords will only ever use a handful.

Grounds 1 and 1A cannot produce a notice expiring in the first 12 months of the tenancy, and both trigger a restricted period during which the property cannot be re-let or marketed. That restriction is the most commonly misreported element of the new system and is covered in our article on Ground 1A and the re-letting restriction.

Several grounds also require prior notice to have been given, either in the written statement of terms under section 16D or, in the case of Ground 4A, before the tenancy began. Missing that notice removes the ground, in some cases permanently.

What gates every route

Two compliance preconditions sit underneath the possession route and catch landlords who focus only on the notice.

Deposit protection is the first. Under section 215 of the Housing Act 2004 as substituted from 1 May 2026, the court cannot make a possession order on certain grounds where the deposit was not protected or has not been returned. This is a gateway rather than a defence, and it cannot be cured by protecting the deposit late in every case.

The wider compliance record is the second. A tenant defending a claim will test the gas safety record, the EICR, the written statement of terms and the service of prescribed documents, and a disrepair counterclaim can reduce arrears below the Ground 8 threshold. The grounds do the legal work, but the records decide whether the landlord reaches them.

Under the new system a landlord's ability to end a tenancy depends on documents that were correct months or years earlier. LLCR tracks certificates, deposit protection and service dates in one place, and its Form 3A notice builder produces the notice with the correct period for the grounds selected.