The Renters' Rights Act transitional deadlines: what expires on 31 July 2026
A section 21 notice served before 1 May 2026 dies on 31 July 2026 unless the possession claim is issued first. The information sheet deadline passed on 31 May 2026 and carries a penalty of up to £7,000. Where both stand today.
Published ·5 min read
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026, and most of the coverage stopped there. But the Act's transitional provisions run on their own clock, and two of those dates decide real cases right now. A section 21 notice served before commencement expires on 31 July 2026 unless the possession claim reaches the court first. And the deadline to give existing tenants the information sheet — 31 May 2026 — has already passed, exposing landlords who missed it to a penalty of up to £7,000.
The transitional timeline
| Date | What it is |
|---|---|
| 27 October 2025 | Royal Assent |
| 28 April 2026 | Practical last day to serve a section 21 notice by first-class post, so that deemed service lands before commencement |
| 1 May 2026 | Commencement. Existing assured and assured shorthold tenancies convert to assured periodic tenancies; fixed terms end; section 21 abolished |
| 31 May 2026 | Deadline to give existing tenants the information sheet or written statement |
| 31 July 2026 | Pre-commencement section 21 and section 8 notices expire unless a possession claim has been issued |
If you served a section 21 before 1 May 2026
A notice served before commencement was not wiped out on 1 May. It survives, but on a shortened fuse: you must issue the possession claim by the earlier of the notice's ordinary six-month validity from service, or 31 July 2026.
There is a second limb to this that gets missed. Where a section 21 or section 8 notice was served before commencement and proceedings have not concluded, the tenancy stays an assured shorthold tenancy until they do. It does not convert on 1 May. That transitional exception is what makes the old notice usable at all — and it falls away the moment the notice expires.
A worked example: a notice served by first-class post on 28 April 2026 would ordinarily run to late October. Under the transitional rule it does not. The claim has to be issued before 1 August 2026.
If you miss it, there is no second attempt at section 21 — it no longer exists. The tenancy converts to an assured periodic tenancy, and recovering possession means starting again under a section 8 ground, with its own notice period and a court prepared to test whether the ground is made out. Grounds 1 and 1A, for landlord occupation or sale, carry four months' notice and generally cannot be used in the first twelve months of the tenancy. Realistically that is two to three months lost against the position you were in this week.
If you never gave the information sheet
Every landlord of an existing tenancy had to give tenants written notice of the changes within one month of commencement — by 31 May 2026.
- Tenancy wholly or partly in writing — the government's official Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026, downloaded from GOV.UK. Your own summary of it does not discharge the duty.
- Wholly oral tenancy — a written statement setting out the key terms.
Failing to do so on time is a civil penalty of up to £7,000 for a first offence. If the failure continues after a penalty has been issued, a further offence carries up to £40,000.
Two things follow. First, if you are outside the deadline, serve it now anyway — a breach that has been remedied is a materially better position at a penalty hearing than one still running. Second, if a pre-commencement notice is keeping a tenancy as an AST while proceedings run, the duty is deferred: it bites one month after those proceedings conclude, not on 31 May.
What happened automatically on 1 May 2026
No re-signing was needed and none of this depended on the landlord doing anything:
- Fixed terms ended. Every converted tenancy is periodic and open-ended.
- Section 21 stopped being available for any notice served on or after 1 May 2026.
- Possession now runs through a section 8 ground plus a court order.
- The tenant can end the tenancy on two months' notice at any point.
The old agreement does not become void — its terms survive to the extent they are compatible with the new regime. But any clause that assumed a fixed term, a break clause, or a section 21 route is now dead text, and a tenancy issued today should not contain it.
If you are a tenant
Two checks are worth making. If you were given a section 21 notice before 1 May 2026 and no claim has been issued by 31 July 2026, that notice is spent — it cannot be revived, and any possession attempt has to begin again from a section 8 ground. And if you never received the information sheet, your landlord is in breach of a duty that the local housing authority can enforce; the sheet itself is a free download and you are entitled to it.
England only
The Renters' Rights Act applies to England. Wales has run its own regime under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 since 2022, Scotland has private residential tenancies, and Northern Ireland has separate rules again. None of the dates above apply outside England.
Get the right document
Our UK tenancy template is built for the post-commencement regime — assured periodic by default, no fixed term, no section 21 clause, with the statutory rent-increase procedure and pet-request wording in place.
→ Assured Tenancy Agreement (Periodic) · Section 8 Notice (Seeking Possession)
Related: assured shorthold tenancies are gone — what replaced them · section 21 is gone — how possession works now · section 8 grounds and notice periods.