Two months' notice? Nobody in the industry can agree

Ask three organisations how much notice your tenant has to give you, and you will get three answers. We know, because we have asked.

Since 1 May 2026, the received wisdom is simple enough: tenants give two months' notice to end an assured periodic tenancy, not one. It is in the government's information sheet. It is on the Shelter website. It is on the NRLA website. Every letting agent in the country, ourselves included, has sent something out saying so.

The problem is that the simple version is doing a lot of work, and underneath it there are two questions the sector has not resolved. We have had tenants give notice recently where the answer mattered, and where reasonable people took different views. This post sets out where the disagreement sits. It is not legal advice, and we are deliberately not telling you who is right, because as far as we can establish nobody actually knows.

The first argument: do old tenancy agreements still count?

The Renters' Rights Act amends section 5 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. The new section 5(1ZA) does two things. It says a tenant's notice must be for a period of no more than two months where the landlord has agreed that period in writing, and at least two months where no other period has been agreed.

Read that again, because the whole dispute lives in the phrase "agreed in writing".

Most tenancy agreements signed before May 2026 contain a clause saying the tenant gives one month's notice. That was the norm. The question is whether that clause counts as the landlord having already agreed a shorter period in writing, in which case it survives, or whether it is simply overridden by the new statutory default of two months.

The Act does not say. There is nothing in it expressly preserving or disregarding notice clauses in pre-May 2026 agreements.

The view that old clauses survive. The Independent Landlord's guidance is direct on this: where a tenancy agreement refers to a shorter notice period, for instance one month, that prevails, though a longer notice period or a break clause gives way to the two-month rule. Landlords on the Property118 forum report being told the same by the NRLA when they rang to ask. In the same thread, the assessment is that most lawyers and landlord associations believe a clause in an existing tenancy agreement specifically giving a shorter period would meet the test in the Act and be valid.

The view that they do not. One landlord took the question to an adviser through their legal expenses insurer and was told the opposite: that historic AST notice clauses are not automatically preserved, that an existing tenancy agreement may not amount to a new written agreement for the purposes of section 5(1ZA), and that the statutory two-month default therefore applies. Another landlord in the same discussion reports their legal helpline saying categorically and unequivocally that it is two months.

And the guidance itself pulls in both directions. The government's information sheet for existing tenants tells them they need to give at least two months' notice, that they can agree a shorter period with the landlord in writing, and that a landlord cannot put anything into a tenancy agreement to change or disapply the new rules. Taken together that reads as though the two-month default stands unless there is a fresh, separate agreement. Other government guidance, though, appears to accept that a tenancy agreement can specify the tenant's notice provided it does not exceed two months.

The frustration among landlords is understandable. They were told they did not need to reissue tenancy agreements before 1 May because the new law would override the old clauses. Section 21 went immediately. The four-month notice period for selling went immediately. As one landlord put it on Property118, the one thing landlords thought they could rely on was two months' notice from tenants. Another described the position as pick and mix, and pointed out that if old clauses do survive, two tenants in identical properties on identical periodic tenancies have different obligations purely because of when they signed.

Will a court settle it? Probably not. The realistic assessment in that discussion is that it would need to be tested in court for a definitive position, which likely will not happen because it is a time-limited issue. As old tenancies turn over, the question dies out. Which means the ambiguity may simply persist until it becomes irrelevant.

The second argument: when does the notice actually expire?

This one is less discussed and, in our experience, causes more grief.

Two months' notice is not two months from the day the tenant emails you. A tenant's notice to quit is subject to the common law rule that it must expire at the end of a rent period, or the day after. That rule is not written into the Act, but it is still binding, and it grew up around the periodic tenancy itself: you can only end it at the natural break between periods. The Act's own Explanatory Notes, at paragraph 204, put the default as not less than two months before the end of a period of the tenancy.

Stack those two requirements and something awkward falls out. Unless a tenant gives precisely two clear months timed to land on the end of a rent period, the notice the landlord can actually require sits somewhere between two and just under three months.

A worked example, from the Independent Landlord's guidance. Rent period ends on the 25th. Tenant serves notice on 28 January. Two whole calendar months have not passed by 25 March, so the earliest the notice can expire is 25 April. That is close to three calendar months from the date it was served, and the tenant who thought they were giving two months is out by a month.

Here is where it gets genuinely uncomfortable. The Independent Landlord's guide states that where rent is due on the 1st and notice is served on 1 May, the tenancy ends on 31 July rather than 30 June, and says in terms that 30 June is what Shelter, the NRLA and several other organisations are advising. If that is right, then a tenant following advice from the two most prominent sources of tenancy guidance in the country would serve notice a full month short, in good faith, and discover the shortfall when the rent demand arrives.

We are not going to adjudicate that. We will say that we have seen the consequences of the confusion at close quarters, and that they are exactly what you would expect: a tenant who believed they had done everything correctly, an agent pointing at the calendar, and a conversation nobody wanted to have.

Three other things that have caught people out

Notice by text may well be valid. Since 1 May 2026, tenants have been able to serve notice by email or even text message. Landlords and agents who assume notice only counts if it arrives on letterhead are working from the old world. The safer practice, for tenants, is to send a hard copy as well and keep proof of both.

Notice can be served from day one. Under section 20 of the Act, a tenant can serve two months' notice from the very first day of the tenancy. There is no minimum term to sit through. Section 13 goes further and creates a duty on landlords and agents not to purport to let for a fixed term, with local authorities able to impose civil penalties of up to £7,000 for breaches.

This does not apply to everyone. The tenancy reforms cover assured periodic tenancies. They do not reach tenancies with annual rent above £100,000, lodgers, company lets, or tenancies regulated by the Rent Act 1977. Purpose-built student accommodation sits outside the assured system too.

What we do about it

We are not going to pretend to certainty the sector does not have.

What we do is this. When a tenant tells us they are thinking of moving, we work the dates through with them before they serve anything, against their specific agreement and their specific rent date. If there is a question over which reading of section 5(1ZA) applies to their tenancy, we would rather surface it in a phone call in week one than in a rent demand in month three. Where a tenant on an older agreement has served notice in good faith on the shorter period, the pragmatic course, and the one suggested on the landlord forums, is usually to agree it rather than to fight it.

The genuinely useful advice we can offer, to tenants and landlords both, is unglamorous: check before you serve, not after. Two months from your rent date is the right mental model, and it is very rarely two months from the date on your email.

If you are a Castle Estates tenant and you are thinking about a move, ring us before you put anything in writing. If you are a landlord with tenants on pre-May 2026 agreements and you have not thought about which reading applies to your portfolio, it is worth an hour of someone's time.