If you occupy your home under an assured shorthold tenancy, you may be amongst the thousands of people who have received from your landlord a section 21 eviction notice before the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 takes effect on 1st May 2026. On that day the law changes. Tenants who previously could have been evicted on as little as 2 months notice will then have lifetime security of tenure. Landlords will only be able to evict a tenant if they can prove to a judge that they have legitimate grounds to do so. What this means is that many buy-to-let landlords are trying to get out of the market before the law changes on that date. So what do you need to do if you are a tenant who has received a section 21 eviction notice?
Sit tight. At least for the time being. A landlord who evicts you, still has to go through the process of getting a possession order through the courts, even though there is currently an accelerated process for doing this. And even after a court order has been obtained, the only way which a landlord can forcibly evict a tenant is by engaging the services of a bailiff, which itself can take months.
if you have received a section 21 notice but your landlord has not issued court proceedings against you before a 1st August 2026 cut off date, the Section 21 notice will lapse and the landlord will have to start the whole process again. Only this time round, you will be a sitting tenant. It means that the only way your landlord will be able to evict you is if they can convince a County Court judge that they have legitimate grounds for ending your tenancy. A process which could take up to a year, given the current delays to the court system in the UK.
If you have children living with you, or are pregnant, or are old or have a serious health condition, your local housing authority may have a duty to ensure that you are not left out on the street. In other words, homeless legislation regards you as someone having a ‘priority need’ for rehousing. So don’t forget to get in touch with your local council as soon as possible.
Once the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 takes effect on the 1st May 2026, private residential landlords in England will have only 1 month to get tenancies correctly documented or face fines of up to £7,000. This means serving existing tenants with a tenant information sheet explaining their new rights under the 2025 Act. These new rights can include lifetime security of tenure, protection against unfair rent increases, the ability to vacate on as little as 2 months prior written notice, and the outlawing of discrimination against tenants who are on welfare or who have children living with them. For landlords who get it wrong, there may be no second chances. Just a financial penalty.
For new tenancies, or those which were previously undocumented, landlords must issue tenants (as well as prospective tenants) with a written statement of terms containing all the information required by the Assured Tenancies (Private Rented Sector) (Written Satement of Terms etc and Information Sheet) (England) Regulations 2026. The content of that written statement of terms must conform exactly to the requirements of the schedule to the 2026 Regulations. That statement can either be standalone or incorporated in a formal tenancy agreement. The Information Sheet to be served on existing tenants must be downloaded as a PDF and must be issued to tenants either as hard copy or by email but exactly in the prescribed format. To help landlords with this, the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government has issued guidance published 20th March 2026 titled, ‘The Renters’s Rights Act Information Sheet 2026: The information sheet about the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 that landlords and their agents must give to tenants’.
Whilst there is no prescribed template for the statement of terms, it is important that particular care is taken to include within these statements of terms any legitimate non-fault grounds of possession to which the tenancy may be subject. Landlords who fail to do this may later have difficulty in recovering possession even when they might otherwise have had legitimate grounds to do so.
The MHCLG Guidance includes the following advice:
the information sheet does not have to be given to lodgers but must be given to every tenant named on the tenancy agreement
the tenant information sheet is only valid when downloaded from the Government website;
the information sheet must be given to tenants either by printing a hard copy and posting or hand delivering to tenants or alternatively sending a PDF electronically as an attachment to an email or text message where it is appropriate to do so. However it is not sufficient just to email or text a link to a tenant;
the legislation does not require landlords to change or reissue an existing written tenancy agreement;
where a tenancy was informally entered into before 1st May 2026 without a written agreement, the landlord must provide a statements of tenancy terms (see above);
Social landlords do not need to provide this information sheet.
Noticeably absent from recent government announcements is any proposal to abolish statutory right-to-buy. To the contrary, Angela Rayner has signaled her commitment to keep the policy, Even if some of the crazy discounts are to be scaled back. Currently, around 40% of ex-right-to-buy properties are owned by private landlords, Meaning that councils have to rent back on their own estates just to meet their statutory housing obligations. And all paid from housing benefit. That’s you and me. No wonder first-time buyers and private renters are priced out of the market. But not everyone who has exercised their right-to-buy is a winner.
It is the high-rise leaseholders who have come off worst. They are the ones facing five figure service charge bills when their local council decides to replace windows. When everyone else living in a block gets it for nothing. But something has to give if you want to rebuild social housing stock and solve Britain’s housing crisis.
King’s Speech 2024 – what it means for conveyancers and other property professionals.
We are not talking about the big-ticket stuff – like House of Lords reform. Instead, we are focusing on the small-print in the Starmer agenda. The things which are likely to affect our day-to-day work. We also mention things which we would have expected to see mentioned in the King’s Speech, on which there has so far been silence. Here are the things which interest us.
A Planning and Infrastructure Bill
This is exciting. For too long, the ‘no’ lobby has been in the ascendancy. And all at a time of housing crisis. Planning has become two politicised. Planning pre-conditions have become long shopping lists, within a process which has become like treacle. Even so, the government’s announced proposals for reforming the planning system are modest: with the restoration of house-building targets and the reclassification of some parts of the green belt. When what is really required is a speeding up of the whole planning process. Which shouldn’t be problematic for a self-financing public service. We’re sure many developers would be willing to pay a little bit extra by way of planning-fees, to pay for the additional staff needed to get their applications through the system. And if it is blocked by local politicians, to get it quickly in front of a government-appointed planning inspector. Why should that be difficult?
Leasehold Reform
Some of it we have heard before. Like replacing a leasehold system which has existed for more than 1000 years by a new system of commonhold.  The legislation already exists in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.  But it didn’t work when Tony Blair tried to introduce it more than 20 years ago. Because nobody wanted it. So why will it work now? Despite its imperfections, residential leasehold is the most workable system for selling flats and maisonettes. So wouldn’t it be better just to make the reforms needed to get the existing residential leasehold system right, instead of trying to force something which nobody wants. At the moment, we are waiting for the new government to bring into force detailed provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, which received royal assent in the last days of the Conservative government. But it is not just about bringing it into force, because the detail will be in the regulations which, as far as we’re aware, have yet to be published. So there is some work for the new government to do before that legislation can take effect. We are also expecting the new government to waste no time in pushing forward with the Renters Reform Bill, which had been tabled by the previous Conservative government but dropped as soon as the general election was called. It always seemed to us that the last government’s commitment to removing section 21 no-fault evictions was always a little half-hearted, we assume because of the landlord-lobby. Funny thing about the section 21 evictions process, was that it was not seen as problematic in 1989 when the private-rented sector was opened up, because the residential market was so different, with residential landlords competing with each other for the best tenants, not the other way round, as it is today. It meant that if, in 1989, you were a reputable tenant who was unlucky enough to be given the section 21 notice of eviction, there would be dozens of other potential landlords bidding to accommodate you. And remember, that in 1988, most councils still had their social rented stock.
Absences
As well as the reforms which the new government has announced, there are also some things missing, which we would have expected to find within the King’s Speech or other government announcements. We are surprised that there has been no mention at all of any scaling back of right-to-buy, not even from the crazy discounts introduced by the Cameron government. What is scandalous is that up to 40% of ex-right-to-buy properties are now in the hands of private landlords, meaning that local authorities are having to rent back ex-right-to-buy properties on their own estates, just to meet their statutory housing needs. What nonsense is that? Is our system of housing benefits really so generous that it can afford to throw money at private landlords, because there is no longer any significant affordable rented sector? No wonder first-time buyers and private renters have been priced out of the housing market. The other thing, for which there has been no mention, is any revamp of the measures brought in by the Gordon Brown government to bring long-term empty dwellings back into occupational use. The problem with Brown’s empty dwellings management orders, was that the whole process was too cumbersome to be of any use. At the last count there were approximately 260,000 empty dwellings in the UK. What a waste!
Legislative Agenda
We have also taken a few moments to look at the government bills which are currently before Parliament. Presently, there are only five government bills, most of which we think are uncontroversial. These include a new Arbitration Bill, building on the existing 1996 legislation, to restore London as the world’s arbitration capital. Who is going to argue with that? And there is also the bill to re-nationalise Britain’s railways. With only four clauses, this bill is astonishingly short for what has become one of the new government’s landmark policies. It does no more than prohibit a re-letting of existing railway franchises except to a government-owned company.
With a new government on 5 July 2024 now a cert, it is time to think about what this means for UK conveyancers. Here are our own predictions for the year ahead.
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024
As this non-controversial piece of legislation reached the statute book in the closing days of the Sunak government, it only remains for Starmer to issue regulations bringing it into force. We expect this to be amongst the first tasks for the new Labour government. The legislation is important because it changes the process for dealing with statutory residential lease extensions and enfranchisements as well as regulating freehold estate management.
Renters Reform Bill
This bill, which was already part way through parliament, was one of the legislative casualties of the general election. The key provision of this bill was the removal of section 21 non-fault evictions. Although the removal of section 21 evictions is not quite a roll-back to the bad old days of rent-controls, it will certainly make many would-be landlords and mortgage lenders think twice before going into this market. It may also lead to a loss in private rented accommodation as landlords sell up when tenants vacate instead of re-letting. When it was first introduced on 1 April, 1989, the ability of landlords to regain possession of their properties on two months notice was not particularly problematic because there was a healthy housing market, which made it easier for prospective tenants to pick and choose where they wanted to live and to negotiate how much they wanted to pay. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case because of the depletion of the social-rented sector. So our expectation is that the new government will waste no time in re- launching this bill and pushing it through to royal assent.
Right-to-buy
Unlike Scotland and Wales, we are not expecting the new government to abolish right-to-buy in its entirety but simply to scale it back, in terms of discount, to what was available when Gordon Brown left office in 2010. At that time, the maximum discount on a right-to-buy sale was capped at £16,000. Our expectation is that this £16,000 cap might be increased to reflect price-inflation but fall well short of the generous discounts introduced by David Cameron when he took power in 2010. What this means is that purchasing under right-to buy may no longer be the attractive proposition which it is today. There are also the transitional arrangements which will need to be put in place for right-to buy purchases which are underway at the time the new legislation is introduced. We are not expecting any changes to right-to-buy to operate retrospectively, which would mean that work-in-progress will be allowed to continue to completion of the transaction.
Reform of the Town Planning System
This is going to be the most difficult task for the incoming government as it will be trying to push back against a bureaucratic inertia which has built up over decades and in which the ‘No!’ lobby has remained supreme. It is not just about restoring the house building targets which had already existed until the recent abolition by the outgoing Conservative administration. It is about breaking through the treacle. The bottom line is that town planning is too politicised. With too many vested interests. It shouldn’t be like that. It’s about making the most efficient use of land. Key to breaking through this inertia is to simplify and speed up the appeals process, so that any developer who feels that their application is being frustrated by local politicians, can quickly get their planning application referred to a third party for determination.
V. Charles Ward
Solicitor and Legal Associate RTPI – 15th June 2024
BRUCE AND HOLLY 