A specialist barrister with a long experience in the field of property law says the Renters Rights Act is a fundamental rewriting of how private renting works in England – and it removes the margin for error that landlords have long relied upon.
From now, assured shorthold tenancies, fixed terms, and Section 21 evictions have all been abolished.
Every private tenancy in England is now periodic and open-ended.
Harry Angelides, barrister at The Barrister Group Chambers and The Property Chambers, is direct about what that means in practice.
“There was always a myth about landlord and tenant law in England,” he says. “The myth was that, provided you had a tenancy agreement and a Section 21 notice, possession was ultimately within your control. Those of us practising in the field knew otherwise. What the Act has done is remove even the illusion of that control.”
Landlords can no longer rely on the passage of time to recover their property.
They must instead prove a statutory ground for possession under an expanded Section 8 framework, with extended notice periods of up to four months before proceedings can even begin. The practical consequence, Angelides argues, is that litigation has become structural rather than exceptional.
“Possession is no longer a right that can be invoked with notice,” he says. “It is a remedy that must be justified, prepared, and proved. Every stage now matters, and without Section 21, there is no fallback if something has been done wrong.”
Among the less-reported changes is a new duty under section 16D of the Housing Act 1988, requiring landlords to provide a written statement of terms and prescribed information at the outset of every tenancy.
Critically, whether certain grounds for possession are included in that statement affects the landlord’s ability to rely on them later. Landlords with existing tenancies must also provide a statutory information sheet to tenants by 31 May 2026, or face fines of up to £7,000.
Rent increases are now limited to once a year and open to challenge at the First-tier Tribunal.
Competitive bidding for properties is prohibited. Blanket bans on benefit claimants and families with children are unlawful.
Pet refusals must be individually justified. Angelides sees these changes as part of a coherent direction of travel.
“The landlord is no longer operating within a largely contractual framework supplemented by statutory rules,” he says. “They are operating within a statutory system that governs the contract from start to finish. Errors at the outset are no longer irritants. They are structural weaknesses.”
Angelides, whose family has been involved in the private rented sector since the 1960s, is measured but unambiguous in his assessment.
“This is not merely an abstract legal shift. The private rented sector has long operated on a mixture of contract, custom, and experience. That model has now been replaced by one of statutory control and procedural discipline. For better or worse, the message is clear: the margin for error has gone.”
He is equally clear about what landlords and their advisers should do now. “Landlords who adapt will continue to operate successfully. Those who do not will find that the difficulty of obtaining possession has not merely increased. It has become determinative.”
He concludes that for a generation, the private rented sector ran on custom, instinct, and the quiet reassurance of Section 21. That era is over.
What replaces it is a system with no shortcuts, no safety net, and no tolerance for the kind of errors that once went unpunished.
And he believes that the landlords who understand that the earliest will be the ones still operating when others have given up.
–
Harry Angelides is a barrister at The Barrister Group Chambers. Established in 2001, the chambers now serves more than 3,000 clients and handled 20,000 matters in 2025, with barristers based throughout the UK to provide expert representation wherever it is needed.
