Section 21’s last rush: accelerated possession claims by council, April to June 2026

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026, and with it no-fault eviction under Section 21 ended for new notices. The Ministry of Justice’s possession statistics for April to June 2026, published on 19 August 2026, were the first to cover it: 8,569 accelerated possession claims in England and Wales, 16% more than a year earlier and 36% of all landlord possession claims. An accelerated claim is, in the Ministry’s words, a quicker route that “doesn’t usually need a court hearing”, the one landlords used with a Section 21 notice.

The Ministry also publishes the figures for every local authority. Those were counted for England, council by council, on 6 October 2026. The short version:

• In England, accelerated claims rose from 6,373 in January to March 2026 to 8,314 in April to June, a 30% jump in one quarter. A year earlier the same two quarters were flat (7,297, then 7,217).
• Against April to June 2025, they were up 15% in England.
• The West Midlands rose most (+37%), the North East did not change.
• 189 councils saw more accelerated claims than a year earlier and 91 saw fewer.
• Birmingham and Ealing added the most (81 more claims each); Lambeth and Bradford doubled.
• Newham still had the most claims (281), though fewer than a year earlier (387).

The Ministry is careful about cause: this quarter “reflects two months of activity following the Act’s implementation”, and the statistics alone do not say why each claim was made. What the timing does show is that the jump came in the quarter the old route closed.

England, quarter by quarter

Accelerated claims are the Section 21 route. Standard private landlord claims are the ones brought on a ground for possession, which is now the only route.

Standard private landlord claims barely moved (up 4% on a year earlier), so the rise in April to June was almost entirely the accelerated route. Accelerated claims made up 53% of private landlord possession claims in England that quarter, against 51% a year earlier.

By region

London made the most claims, as it does every quarter, but it grew more slowly than every region outside the north.

The councils with the biggest rises

By the number of extra accelerated claims against April to June 2025:

Among councils with at least 40 accelerated claims a year earlier, Lambeth (+105%) and Bradford (+100%) doubled, and Ealing, Southend-on-Sea, Birmingham, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Barnet rose by half or more. Smaller councils can swing by a large percentage on a handful of claims, so they are left out of the percentage ranking.

Where the most claims were made

Eight of the ten are London boroughs. Newham made the most accelerated claims in England but 27% fewer than a year earlier, the opposite of the national trend.

What happens now

Section 21 cannot start a new case. GOV.UK sets out the rule for notices given before 1 May 2026: a landlord “must have used it to start court proceedings by whichever date came first: the time left on the notice [or] 31 July 2026”, and a claim issued on or before 31 July “will continue until proceedings have concluded”.

So the last accelerated claims were made in July. The Ministry of Justice’s figures for July to September 2026 are due on 12 November 2026 (provisional) and will show those final weeks. After that, possession for a private landlord in England runs on a ground in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988, given on a Section 8 notice (how to serve a Section 8 notice on Form 3A), and usually a hearing.

For landlords, that means the paperwork matters more than it did: the ground, the notice period, the arrears figures and the evidence that the deposit was protected all have to be right. LetCompliance drafts Section 8 notices on Form 3A from the tenancy’s own records on paid plans, with the rent arrears worked out from the rent ledger.

How these figures were made

Source: Ministry of Justice, Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: April to June 2026, published 19 August 2026, using its local authority data file (Main CSVs). The national figures for England and Wales (8,569 accelerated claims, up 16%, 36% of landlord claims) are the Ministry’s own.

The council and regional figures are a count of that file by LetCompliance on 6 October 2026: England only (local authority codes beginning E), claims the Ministry could not assign to a local authority left out, which is why the England totals here are slightly below a full England figure. The Ministry assigns each claim to “the local authority of the defendant, derived from the defendant’s address”. Accelerated and standard private landlord claims are counted separately, as the Ministry counts them. These are official statistics and are revised from time to time, so later releases may differ slightly.