If you rent privately in England, your tenancy is now rolling. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026 and abolished fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies outright. Every existing AST converted automatically on that date, including agreements that still had eight or ten months left to run, and no new tenancy can be offered on a fixed term. You did not have to sign anything for this to happen.
The practical consequence for anyone planning a move is significant and mostly positive. You can now give two months’ notice at any point rather than waiting for a term to expire or negotiating a break. That single change removes the most expensive timing problem renters used to face, which was paying rent and a mortgage simultaneously because a fixed term did not line up with a completion date.
Quick answer: A rolling tenancy has no end date. It continues indefinitely until the tenant gives notice or the landlord obtains possession on a valid legal ground. In England since 1 May 2026, tenants give two months’ written notice at any time, landlords must use Section 8 grounds because Section 21 is abolished, and rent can rise only once every twelve months on a formal notice.
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What changed for renters in England on 1 May 2026
This table is the fastest way to see the difference between the old assured shorthold system and the assured tenancy regime that replaced it. Everything in the right-hand column applies now, to existing agreements as well as new ones.
| Issue | Before 1 May 2026 | Now | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Length of agreement | Fixed term of 6 or 12 months, then rolling | Rolling from day one, no fixed term possible | No renewal to negotiate and no renewal fee |
| Tenant leaving | Usually locked in for the fixed term | Two months’ written notice at any point | You can time a move to your own schedule |
| No-fault eviction | Section 21, no reason required | Abolished | The landlord must give a legal reason |
| Landlord regaining possession | Section 21 or Section 8 | Section 8 grounds only, through the courts | Notice periods run from two weeks to four months |
| Rent increases | Often via a rent review clause | Once per 12 months, formal notice, review clauses void | Mid-year increases in the agreement are unenforceable |
| Offering a fixed term | Standard practice | Prohibited | Civil penalty of up to £7,000 for a first offence |
The term assured shorthold tenancy no longer exists as a category. Agreements are now assured tenancies, and because they are all rolling, they are commonly described as assured periodic tenancies. If your paperwork still says AST and specifies a twelve-month term, that wording simply has no legal effect any more.
What a rolling agreement actually is
A rolling tenancy runs from one rent period to the next with no expiry date. Most are monthly, matching the rent payment cycle. It continues on the same terms indefinitely until one side ends it properly, and the tenancy is treated as one continuous agreement rather than a series of renewals.
The rent period is the unit that matters. If you pay monthly on the 5th, your tenancy rolls in monthly periods running from the 5th to the 4th. If you pay weekly, it rolls weekly. This matters when notice is served, because notice normally has to expire at the end of a rent period rather than on an arbitrary date.
Everything else in your agreement survives the conversion unchanged. The rent stays the same until it is formally increased. The deposit stays where it is. The obligations on both sides about repairs, pets, subletting and condition all continue. What disappeared is the end date and the shorthold status, not the contract.
There is a distinction worth knowing between a contractual rolling tenancy, which arises because the agreement itself says it continues, and a statutory one, which arises by operation of law. Since May 2026 this is largely academic for private renters in England because the statute imposes the same outcome either way, but you will still see both terms used in landlord and letting agent material written before the change.
Giving notice as a tenant: the two-month clock
Tenants must usually give two months’ written notice, expiring at the end of a rent period. You can serve it at any time, including in the first month of a brand new tenancy. A landlord can agree in writing to accept shorter notice, and many will if the property is easy to re-let.
Put it in writing, keep a copy, and get an acknowledgement. Email is fine and creates a better record than a conversation. State the date the tenancy will end and check that date falls at the end of a rent period, because a notice that expires mid-period can be treated as invalid and push your exit back by a full month.
A worked example. You pay rent on the 1st, so your rent periods run 1st to end of month. You want out by the end of October. Serving notice on 28 August gives you two months expiring 31 October, which works. Serving on 5 September does not produce a valid 31 October end date, because that is only 8 weeks and does not align. You would be looking at 30 November instead. Getting this wrong costs an entire month’s rent, which is the single most expensive avoidable error in the process.
Joint tenancies need care. Where two or more tenants hold a tenancy jointly, notice given by one tenant can end the tenancy for everyone. Housemates should agree the plan before anyone serves anything, because an individual cannot usually remove themselves and leave the others in place without the landlord agreeing to a new arrangement.
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What a landlord must now prove to end it
Section 21 no-fault eviction is abolished. A landlord must rely on a ground under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988, serve the correct notice, and go to court if the tenant does not leave. Notice periods range from around two weeks for serious breaches to four months for selling or moving in.
This is the change with the biggest effect on security of tenure, and it cuts both ways. Renters gain protection from being asked to leave without a reason. Landlords gain a slower and more procedural route to possession, which is why some have exited the market.
The common grounds a private tenant is likely to encounter are the landlord intending to sell the property, the landlord or a close family member intending to move in, serious rent arrears, anti-social behaviour, and breach of the tenancy agreement. Some grounds are mandatory, meaning the court must grant possession if the ground is made out, and others are discretionary, meaning the court weighs whether it is reasonable.
Receiving a Section 8 notice does not mean you have to leave on the date it specifies. It means the landlord can begin court proceedings after that date. Anyone in this position should take advice quickly rather than moving out on the strength of the notice alone. Shelter and Citizens Advice both run free services covering exactly this situation, and local authority housing teams have a duty to help in some circumstances.
Rent increases: once a year, on a formal notice
Rent can be increased only once in any twelve-month period, using a formal Section 13 notice on the prescribed form, giving at least two months’ notice. Rent review clauses inside tenancy agreements are void, and a tenant who believes the proposed rent is above market rate can challenge it at the First-tier Tribunal.
The prescribed form is Form 4A. An increase communicated by text message, letter or email without the correct form is not a valid increase, and the tenant is not obliged to pay it. This is a common area of confusion for landlords who managed properties under the old rules for years and have not caught up.
The challenge route matters. If you receive a Section 13 notice proposing an increase you think exceeds the going rate for comparable local properties, you can apply to the First-tier Tribunal before the increase takes effect. The tribunal determines the open market rent. Gather evidence first: current listings for similar properties on the same streets, ideally three or four with comparable size and condition.
A rent increase is also a legitimate trigger for deciding to move. Because you can now serve two months’ notice at any time, you are no longer stuck between accepting an increase and breaking a fixed term. Weigh the increase against the real cost of relocating, which our guide to moving house costs in the UK breaks down properly.
Your deposit and paperwork after the conversion
Deposits did not need re-protecting. The old and new tenancy are treated as one continuous agreement, so existing protection in a government-approved scheme carries over, and compliance documents such as the gas safety certificate, EICR and EPC did not need re-serving.
If your deposit was protected in TDS, the Deposit Protection Service or MyDeposits before May 2026, it remains protected on the same terms. You should not have received a new prescribed information pack, and the absence of one is not a compliance failure.
What your landlord did have to do is serve a written statement of the new tenancy terms, or the government information sheet, within one month of the tenancy converting. If you never received one, that is a genuine gap worth raising, though it does not affect the validity of your tenancy.
Keep the original agreement even though its fixed-term clause is now void. It remains the record of the rent, the deposit amount, the inventory reference and the obligations on both sides, and you will want all of that when you eventually move out. Our checklist for moving out of a flat covers the practical end-of-tenancy steps.
The agreements that did not convert
Four categories sit outside the reforms: tenancies with annual rent above £100,000, lodger arrangements where you share with a live-in landlord, lettings to companies rather than individuals, and older tenancies regulated under the Rent Act 1977.
There is also a transitional exception that still affects a small number of households. Where a landlord served a valid Section 21 or Section 8 notice before 1 May 2026 and possession proceedings had not concluded, the tenancy remained an assured shorthold tenancy until those proceedings finished or the notice lapsed. If you were in that position in the spring, check where things stand now, because the tenancy will have converted at the point the notice expired or the case ended.
Lodgers are the largest excluded group in practice. If you live in the same property as your landlord and share a kitchen or bathroom with them, you are almost certainly an excluded occupier rather than an assured tenant, and none of the protections above apply to you. Notice requirements for lodgers are far shorter and there is no court process.
Purpose-built student accommodation and university halls also sit under different arrangements from private lettings. Students renting a private house from a private landlord are generally covered by the mainstream rules. Our student removals guide covers the practicalities of halls and shared housing moves.
Scotland and Wales work differently
The Renters’ Rights Act applies to England. Scotland moved to open-ended Private Residential Tenancies in December 2017, with 28 days’ tenant notice. Wales operates occupation contracts under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016.
| Nation | Governing framework | Fixed terms? | Tenant notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | Renters’ Rights Act 2025, from 1 May 2026 | Abolished | Usually two months |
| Scotland | Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 | None since December 2017 | 28 days in most cases |
| Wales | Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 | Fixed and periodic contracts both exist | Four weeks minimum on a periodic standard contract |
| Northern Ireland | Private Tenancies Act (NI) 2022 | Fixed terms still used | Depends on length of tenancy |
Scotland got here first, and the Scottish experience is the closest thing to evidence for how the English market adjusts. Open-ended tenancies have been the norm there since 2017 without the rental market collapsing, though rent levels in Edinburgh and Glasgow have risen substantially over the same period for reasons that are heavily debated.
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Timing a move around the notice period
We mapped the two months’ notice against the typical timelines for the three moves renters actually make, to work out when notice should be served in each case. The results show that the new rules remove a cost that used to be unavoidable for renters buying a first home.
| Scenario | When to serve notice | Risk if you serve too early | What the old rules cost you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renting to renting | Once you have signed the new tenancy | Homeless gap if the new let falls through | Often a month of double rent or a term break fee |
| Renting to buying | At exchange of contracts, not before | Chain delay leaves you with no home | Two to four months of rent plus mortgage together |
| Renting to a shared or family address | As soon as the arrangement is confirmed | Minimal, the fallback is flexible | Locked in until the fixed term expired |
| Leaving after a rent increase | Within the two months before it takes effect | Increase applies for any overlap month | Accept the rise or pay to break the term |
The renting-to-buying row is the one that has genuinely changed. Under the old system, a first-time buyer whose fixed term ran to March but whose purchase completed in November had two options: pay rent and mortgage together for four months, or negotiate a break and often forfeit something for it. On a £1,200 monthly rent, four months of overlap is £4,800, which is real money at exactly the point a buyer has none.
Now the same buyer serves notice at exchange and lines the tenancy end up with completion, give or take a fortnight of deliberate overlap for the move itself. Two weeks of double payment at £1,200 a month is roughly £600, against £4,800 previously. That overlap is worth keeping rather than eliminating, because it gives you keys to both properties and turns a frantic single-day handover into a manageable one.
The critical discipline is not serving notice before exchange. Everything ahead of exchange can collapse, and a tenant who served notice on the strength of an accepted offer can end up with neither property. Our complete moving house checklist sets out where exchange sits in the wider sequence.
Rent figures are illustrative examples using a £1,200 monthly rent to show the shape of the saving, not a quoted average.
Where the flexibility does not help you
Rolling tenancies cut both ways. You lose the guaranteed twelve months of security a fixed term gave you, joint tenants lose the ability to plan around a shared end date, and in tight rental markets landlords have less incentive to hold a property for a tenant who has not yet committed.
Most coverage of this reform is written from one side or the other. The balanced position is that renters gained a lot and gave up something real.
If you have children in a specific school catchment and needed certainty of a full academic year, a fixed term used to provide it and nothing now does. The Section 8 grounds requiring four months’ notice for a landlord selling or moving in are meaningful protection, but they are not the same as an unbreakable twelve-month term. Families in that position should have a candid conversation with the landlord about their intentions rather than assuming stability.
Sharers face a specific problem. On a joint tenancy, one person’s notice can end the tenancy for everyone, and there is no longer a natural annual reset point where the group re-forms and re-signs. Groups sharing long term should agree in writing between themselves what happens when someone wants out, because the law will not manage that for you.
This article is general information about how the rules work, not legal advice on your circumstances. For a specific problem, particularly anything involving a possession notice, contact Shelter, Citizens Advice or a housing solicitor.
How EcoGreen Movers fits around a notice period
Two months’ notice gives you a genuinely comfortable window to organise a move, which is more planning time than most buyers in a chain ever get. EcoGreen Movers is a nationwide UK removals company working from fixed quotes and reusable crates rather than disposable cardboard, which matters in rented properties where you are also trying to leave the place spotless for a deposit inspection.
We handle residential moves across the UK, including house moves in London, removals in Manchester and removals in Edinburgh, plus packing and storage if your dates do not line up neatly. Get in touch for a quote once you know your notice date.
Frequently asked questions
How much notice do I have to give my landlord?
Usually two months in England, in writing, expiring at the end of a rent period. You can serve it at any time, including in the first weeks of a new tenancy. A landlord can agree in writing to accept less. In Scotland the standard is 28 days, and in Wales four weeks on a periodic standard contract.
Did my fixed-term agreement end automatically?
In England, yes. On 1 May 2026 almost every assured shorthold tenancy converted to a rolling assured tenancy, and any remaining months of the fixed term ceased to have effect. You did not need to sign anything or renew. The one exception involved tenancies where a valid possession notice had already been served.
Can my landlord still increase the rent?
Yes, but only once in any twelve months, using a Section 13 notice on Form 4A with at least two months’ notice. Rent review clauses in the agreement are void. If you think the proposed figure exceeds the local market rate, you can challenge it at the First-tier Tribunal before it takes effect.
Can I be evicted without a reason now?
No. Section 21 no-fault eviction is abolished in England. A landlord must rely on a ground under Section 8, serve the correct notice, and apply to court if you do not leave. Notice periods vary by ground, from around two weeks for serious breaches to four months where the landlord is selling or moving in.
Does my deposit need re-protecting?
No. The old and new tenancy are treated as one continuous agreement, so existing protection in an approved scheme carried over, and documents such as the gas safety certificate, EICR and EPC did not need re-serving. Your landlord did have to provide a written statement of terms within one month of conversion.
In summary: no end date, two months’ notice, one rent rise a year
Private renting in England now runs on rolling agreements with no expiry. You give two months’ written notice ending at the end of a rent period, your landlord needs a legal ground and a court order to remove you, and rent can rise once a year on a formal notice you are entitled to challenge.
For anyone planning a move, the flexibility is the headline. Serve notice when your next home is genuinely secure, which means at exchange if you are buying and after signing if you are renting again. Build in a fortnight of deliberate overlap if you can afford it, because moving with keys to both properties is a completely different experience from moving without them.
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