As is statistically inevitable, a diminishing proportion of us remember the 80s. Big hair, yuppies, Duran Duran and, yes, Mrs Thatcher. For my teenage children, this is now history taught in school. An increasing number of my colleagues were born during this century whereas I remember precisely where I was when the fireworks ushered in a new millennium, that Robbie Williams song was ubiquitous and planes didn’t fall from the sky.
It is 1988. A year into Mrs Thatcher’s third term. A new housing act (which I would have known or cared little about at the time). The time of the Right to Buy and of denationalisation of state assets, including the utility companies. The poll tax soon to follow.
The principle of that new Act, I imagine, was that if I can lend you my car, or rent a car, then either arrangement is inherently temporary. So should it be with a property.
New tenancies were called ‘shorthold’ to reflect their transience. If an owner wanted it back, and asked for it back with the right notice, he should be entitled to have it back. In an appropriate case, possession could be obtained without the need for a court hearing. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.
Nearly forty years have now gone by and the degree to which that arrangement worked for landlords and for tenants has been the subject of intense scrutiny and ongoing tinkering.
Tenants could be required to leave within a few months, making the journey to work unpredictable, and access to schooling and health care insecure. To extend them a degree of additional safety and security, tenancy deposits became regulated by provisions in the Housing Act 2004, whilst gas safety certificates and energy performance certificates became mandatory, along with the provision of the government’s booklet ‘How to Rent’. All of this was enforced by piggy-backing section 21, precluding landlords from deploying it where the rules had not been complied with.
TV documentaries and newspaper features highlighted the worst offending Rachman landlords who cared little for the condition of their rented property and its impact on tenants who were charged unfair, ever-increasing and often unaffordable rents. The term ‘no fault eviction’ became a commonplace synonym for section 21 and the scheme was widely decried as unfair.
The absence of public sector housing (particularly since the very period when section 21 had been created) meant that a significant amount of private sector accommodation had to be available and the disincentives to landlords mitigated. Each change and additional burden had to be balanced.
Over many years this hot potato saw successive governments promise reform. Now, at last, we are on the cusp as the first elements of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 come into force on 1st May 2026.
Grammatically, it may seem ambiguous whether the ‘renters’ of the title are those who rent out or those who are rented to, not least since both are affected. However the intention is clear enough.
The introduction to the Act explains that it is “to make provision changing the law about rented homes, including provision abolishing fixed term assured tenancies and assured shorthold tenancies; imposing obligations on landlords and others in relation to rented homes and temporary and supported accommodation; and for connected purposes”.
More bluntly, ‘gov.uk’ introduces the legislation in this way: “Reform of the sector is long overdue, and we will act where previous governments have failed. While the majority of landlords provide a good service, the private rented sector currently provides the least affordable, poorest quality and most insecure housing of all tenures”.
At a stroke section 2 of the new Act abolishes Chapter 2 of Part 1 of the 1988 Act. This encompasses section 19A to section 23, including (of course) section 21. This will be amongst the first provisions coming into force in May 2026. These initial provisions will be followed later in the year by a national landlord’s database whilst the proposed ‘decent homes standard’ remains on ice.
During the lengthy consultation, it was often suggested that there was a significant risk that investors would simply ‘exit the market’, that landlords would shun the new risks and regulations and that there would be a glut of one and two-bedroom flats at a time when the lending criteria remained such that few could afford them. There had to be some give and take.
There are to be no more fixed term ASTs and it is made clear (by section 13 of the 2025 Act, creating a new section 16E to the 1988 Act) that a landlord cannot purport to terminate a tenancy by Notice to Quit or orally.
Of course beyond section 21, possession could (and can) be pursued by section 8 of the 1988 Act. In conjunction with Schedule 2, this provided mandatory and so-called ‘discretionary’ grounds through which a court might make a possession order. In the latter cases, provided a gateway fact was established (such as some arrears, persistent late payment or some other breach of the tenancy conditions), the court could make a possession order if it considered it reasonable to do so. The new Act recasts some of these grounds and the minimum periods of notice applicable according to the ground relied upon (new section 4AA).
The old (mandatory) ‘ground 1’ concerning returning owner-occupiers was arcanely worded and difficult to deploy. A new ‘ground 1’ is contained in Schedule 1 to the 2025 Act. This has the effect of obliging the court to grant possession if it is satisfied that the landlord or an immediate family member of the landlord intends to use the property as his or her only or principal home. Additionally a new ground 1A permits landlords to secure vacant possession in anticipation of sale.
Other changes include that rental periods cannot exceed a month, that rent cannot be demanded in advance (except for the initial period) and can only be increased once a year, that ASTs cannot be demoted by reason of anti-social behaviour and that tenants may request permission to keep a pet (for which consent cannot unreasonably be withheld). Landlords and their agents cannot accommodate a bidding war by accepting offers of rent beyond their advertised figure.
The legislation further includes provisions which will prohibit discrimination pertaining to a tenant or putative tenant’s benefit status or his/her having children. These and other offences are to be regulated by local authorities, with a power to impose financial penalties.
And the effect on practitioners? No new section 21 notices may be served, but notices already served can of course be relied upon. The hopelessly misnamed ‘accelerated procedure’, by which possession could be obtained on the basis of a section 21 notice without a hearing ‘on the papers’ (provided no other remedy was sought and all regulatory requirements, such as gas safety certificates, had been met), can no longer be deployed. This means that in every case save in cases of surrender by the tenant, landlords must go to court and must have a reason for doing so. This will presumably lead to a significant increase in the lists of short, initial possession hearings and plenty to keep junior housing barristers and solicitor’s agents busy.
When the County Courts at Bow and Ilford closed some years ago, there was considered to be insufficient capacity to deal with possession claims at Clerkenwell and Romford. As a result, the Stratford Magistrates Court assigned a court room to deal exclusively with such claims. Similarly, a court room in Bexleyheath picks up the slack created by the closure of Woolwich where Bromley cannot. The further deployment of targeted resources in this way can only be anticipated, particularly if the Ministry of Justice makes further closures. Parliament cannot sensibly legislate in a way which creates more court hearings without providing sufficient facilities to accommodate them, given particularly the existing delays between issue and hearing and between hearing (or rather final Order) and enforcement.
Graeme Kirk
March 2026
