Assured Periodic Tenancy: Renters Rights Act Guide

An assured periodic tenancy is a rolling tenancy with no set end date. Before 1 May 2026, most private renters in England had assured shorthold tenancies, typically fixed for 6 or 12 months, after which they rolled into a periodic tenancy or were renewed. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 removed the fixed-term option entirely.

Every tenancy that existed on 1 May 2026 automatically converted to an assured periodic tenancy on that date (NRLA, 2025). Any tenancy created after that date is an APT from day one. There is no opt-out and no transitional period where landlords can still offer fixed terms.

The practical effect: your tenancy now runs from rent period to rent period. If you pay rent monthly, your tenancy period is one month. The tenancy continues until you serve two months' written notice to leave, or until your landlord successfully obtains a possession order through the courts using one of the grounds set out in Schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988, as amended by the Renters' Rights Act.

You cannot be told your tenancy is simply 'up'. Your landlord cannot hand you a date and tell you to leave because the contract has run its course. That mechanism, Section 21, was abolished on 1 May 2026 alongside the fixed-term system. For more on what that abolition means in practice, see Section 21 ends on 1 May 2026. What that means for your tenancy.

Two months. That is the statutory minimum notice period for a tenant to end an assured periodic tenancy under the Renters' Rights Act 2025. You can serve that notice at any time, from day one of your tenancy if you need to. There is no minimum period you have to stay.

Your notice must be in writing and must specify the date on which you want the tenancy to end. In practice, that date needs to fall at the end of a rental period to be clean, though the Act gives some flexibility on this. Get the wording wrong and your landlord could dispute whether the notice was valid, which delays everything.

If you want to leave faster than two months and your landlord agrees, you can negotiate a shorter period. That agreement should be in writing. Your landlord cannot hold you to losses beyond what the law allows, and they are under a duty to mitigate loss by re-letting the property.

Landlords have different notice requirements depending on which Section 8 ground they are using. Some grounds require two months' notice; others, like serious rent arrears, require 14 days. The notice period is not symmetric, which matters when your landlord starts talking about asking you to leave.

Your landlord can raise your rent, but they must follow the Section 13 process. Under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, landlords must use a Section 13 notice to propose a rent increase for an assured periodic tenancy. They cannot simply put a rent review clause in your tenancy agreement and activate it whenever they choose.

A Section 13 notice must give you at least two months' notice of the proposed increase. You have the right to challenge the proposed rent at the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) before the increase takes effect. The Tribunal's job is to assess what the open market rent would be for your property. If the market rent is lower than what your landlord is asking, the Tribunal can set a lower figure.

One important limit introduced by the Renters' Rights Act: landlords can only propose one rent increase per year under Section 13. That annual cap closes off the tactic of repeated incremental increases designed to price tenants out without a formal eviction.

If your landlord is trying to push through an increase outside this process, or the increase looks designed to force you out rather than reflect the market, that is worth examining carefully. Our guide on how to challenge an unlawful rent increase UK covers the tribunal process step by step.

With Section 21 gone, possession now depends entirely on Section 8. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 expanded and revised the Schedule 2 grounds, splitting them into mandatory grounds (where the court must grant possession if proved) and discretionary grounds (where the court weighs up the circumstances).

The mandatory grounds most relevant to tenants include:

• Ground 1A (selling the property): the landlord intends to sell, must give four months' notice, and cannot re-let for 12 months after possession.
• Ground 1 (landlord moving in): the landlord or a close family member genuinely intends to occupy the property as their only or principal home, with four months' notice required.
• Ground 8 (serious rent arrears): at least three months' rent arrears both at the time of the notice and at the hearing. This is the ground most commonly used against tenants in financial difficulty.

The discretionary grounds include persistent late payment of rent (Ground 11) and breach of tenancy obligations (Ground 12). On discretionary grounds, even if the landlord proves the ground, the court can refuse possession if it considers it unreasonable to grant it.

The Renters' Rights Act added a new anti-avoidance rule: if a landlord uses Ground 1 or 1A and then re-lets within the prohibited period, the former tenant can claim compensation. Courts are watching how landlords use these grounds in the early months of the new regime (Mishcon de Reya, 2025).

If you have received a Section 8 notice, check which grounds are cited, whether the notice period is correct for those grounds, and whether the factual claims in the notice are accurate. Our guide to Section 8 notice grounds, rights and how to respond sets out the response process in detail.

Yes, and it is more common than it should be. Tactics include letting the property fall into disrepair to make it uninhabitable, refusing to carry out repairs until you give up and leave, threatening you with spurious legal action, or simply making your life difficult enough that moving seems easier than staying.

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 introduced specific protections against these approaches. Landlords cannot raise rent to an unreasonable level with the intent to force departure rather than to reflect the market. Landlords cannot harass tenants or interfere with their quiet enjoyment. And landlords cannot serve retaliatory possession notices in response to a tenant complaining about disrepair or exercising their legal rights.

If a possession notice arrives shortly after you reported a repair issue or complained to the council, that timing is significant. Courts can take it into account, and in some cases the notice will be invalid.

The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 also apply to the landlord-tenant relationship in ways many tenants do not know about. If your landlord made misleading statements to keep you in a property or to discourage you from pursuing rights, that could give you a separate claim. See tenant remedies for unfair trading practices for how that works. Our article on backdoor eviction protections under the Renters Rights Act covers the full range of retaliatory tactics and how to respond to each one.

The assured periodic tenancy framework does not wipe the slate clean on any violations your landlord committed before 1 May 2026. Deposit protection failures, unlicensed HMO operation, missing gas safety certificates, and disrepair that predates the Act are all still actionable.

Deposit protection is the most straightforward. If your landlord failed to protect your deposit in a government-approved scheme within 30 days of receiving it, or failed to give you the required prescribed information, you can claim compensation of one to three times the deposit amount under Section 214 of the Housing Act 2004. A £1,500 deposit that was never protected could mean up to £4,500 in compensation, plus the return of the deposit itself.

Rent repayment orders are available where your landlord was operating an unlicensed HMO, had control or management of a property subject to a banning order, or committed certain other housing offences. The maximum award is 12 months' rent. On a £1,200 monthly rent, that is £14,400 recoverable through the First-tier Tribunal.

Disrepair claims remain available under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and, from May 2026, Awaab's Law applies to the private rented sector for the first time, setting strict timelines for landlords to investigate and fix damp and mould. If your landlord has ignored a damp or mould problem, you now have a specific statutory right to enforce action. See our guide on mould and damp landlord obligations and tenant claims for what that process looks like.

Remedy Legal can assess your situation across all of these areas in one go. Upload your tenancy agreement, answer a few questions about your landlord's conduct, and Remedy's assessment tool identifies which claims apply, estimates their value using data from similar cases, and tells you what your next step is. The initial assessment is free, with no credit card required.

Remedy Legal is an AI-powered legal platform built for UK tenants. It is not a law firm, but it does what most people actually need before they get anywhere near a solicitor: a clear, plain-English assessment of what the law says about their situation, what they are owed, and what to do next.

For assured periodic tenancy disputes, Remedy's tenancy agreement analysis tool reads your agreement, identifies clauses that may be unenforceable under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 or the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and flags issues you might not have spotted. Upload a PDF or DOCX and the platform extracts the key terms within minutes.

If your landlord has served a possession notice, Remedy's situation assessment tool walks you through the grounds cited, checks whether the notice period is correct, and tells you whether you have grounds to challenge it. If there are parallel violations (deposit protection, HMO licensing, disrepair), Remedy identifies those too and estimates the claim value using data from similar cases.

For tenants who want to go further, the paid tier at £40 one-time gives you court bundle generation, deadline tracking, tribunal filing support, and expert letter templates. If your case needs a human expert, Remedy's no win no fee option provides strategic guidance, expert document review, and a 30-minute consultation, charged at a percentage of winnings only if you win.

You can start on WhatsApp if that is easier. Send a message describing your situation and Remedy's AI assistant will assess it and coordinate the next steps, including generating a formal letter to your landlord citing the relevant legislation. For tenants dealing with a Section 8 notice, a rent increase, or a landlord who simply will not engage, having a letter drafted to the correct legal standard changes the dynamic fast.