Student lets after the Renters’ Rights Act: what actually changed

Student letting ran on a calendar that barely changed in thirty years. Sign in November or January for the following September, twelve-month fixed term, everyone out in June or July, turn the house around over the summer, repeat. The fixed term was the whole machine: it guaranteed the rent for the academic year and it guaranteed the house back in time for the next one.

On 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act removed fixed-term assured tenancies. Not softened them, removed them. There is no student carve-out. GOV.UK is blunt about it: the Act "will remove fixed-term assured tenancies", and every assured tenancy is now periodic with the tenant able to leave on two months' notice.

There is a replacement route for getting a student house back, Ground 4A. It works, but it has six conditions, and one of them quietly outlaws the traditional signing season. If you are letting to students this autumn, that is the part to read.

What actually changed on 1 May 2026

Three things, and they compound:

Fixed terms are gone. You cannot tie a student to twelve months. The tenancy is periodic from day one.

The tenant can leave whenever they like, on two months' notice. A student who drops out in January, or falls out with the house, or gets a placement in another city, can serve notice and go. There is no penalty, and no obligation to see out the academic year.

Your route back is a possession ground, not a date. Before, the tenancy simply ended. Now you have to actively recover possession using a ground in Schedule 2, and you have to satisfy its conditions.

Put together: the guaranteed income and the guaranteed vacancy have both become conditional. That is the real change, and it is bigger than the paperwork.

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Ground 4A: the student HMO route

Ground 4A was inserted into Schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988 by the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and came into force on 1 May 2026. It is mandatory, meaning that if you prove it the court must order possession. That is the good news.

The conditions, all of which must be met:

1. 1The dwelling is, or is in, an HMO.
2. 2The tenant met the student test when the tenancy began. That means a full-time student, or someone the landlord reasonably believed would become one during the tenancy. Where there is more than one tenant, every tenant must meet it.
3. 3You gave a written statement before the tenancy was entered into saying you might recover possession on this ground. The statute requires that "the landlord or, in the case of joint landlords, at least one of them, gives the tenant, before the tenancy is entered into, a written statement".
4. 4The period between signing and the tenant becoming entitled to possession is six months or less. More on this below, because it is the one that catches people.
5. 5The possession date falls between 1 June and 30 September in any year.
6. 6You intend to let to students again.

Miss any one and the ground is not available for that tenancy. There is no cure and no discretion.

The trap: the six-month signing rule

This is the condition almost nobody is talking about, and it is fatal to the way student lets have always been done.

In the statute's own words, the condition is that "the period":

"(i) beginning with the day on which the tenancy was entered into, and (ii) ending with the day on which the tenant was entitled to possession of the dwelling-house, is six months or less"

Read it slowly. The clock starts the day the tenancy is signed, not the day it starts. It ends the day the student is entitled to possession, i.e. move-in. That gap must be six months or less.

The traditional student calendar signs in November, December or January for a September move-in. That is eight to ten months. Every one of those tenancies fails condition 4, and with it Ground 4A is gone for that tenancy, permanently. You did nothing else wrong. You signed too early.

GOV.UK's own guide puts the same rule in plainer words: the ground "cannot be used if the tenancy was agreed more than 6 months in advance of the tenancy starting".

So for a 1 September move-in, the earliest you can sign and keep Ground 4A is roughly 1 March. In a market where students are used to being asked to commit before Christmas, that is a genuine commercial change, not just an administrative one.

The second trap: four months' notice inside a four-month window

Ground 4A carries a four-month notice period. You won't find that in the ground itself: it comes from the notice-period table at section 8(4AA) of the Housing Act 1988, where Ground 4A sits in the four-month row alongside Grounds 1, 1A, 2 and 6.

Now line that up with condition 5, which says the possession date must fall between 1 June and 30 September.

• Want possession on 30 June (the classic end-of-academic-year date)? Serve by roughly 28 February.
• Want possession on 1 September? Serve by roughly 1 May.
• Want possession on 30 September, the last date the window allows? Serve by roughly 30 May. Serve in June and you have already missed that summer's window.

In other words the notice for next summer has to go out during the current academic year, while the students are still living there. Landlords used to a tenancy that simply expired are not in the habit of serving anything at all, and four months is long enough that "I'll sort it after Easter" quietly becomes "I have lost a year".

Who Ground 4A does not help

Three groups of landlords will read the above and assume they are covered when they are not.

Two-bed flats and small student lets. Ground 4A requires an HMO. The standard definition is three or more tenants forming more than one household and sharing facilities. Two students sharing a two-bed flat are generally not an HMO, so Ground 4A is not available at all. That is a large slice of the student market with no student-specific route back.

Mixed households. Every tenant must meet the student test. One non-student partner, one tenant who finished their course and stayed on, and the ground fails for the whole tenancy.

Landlords thinking of Ground 4. Ground 4 is a different, older ground and it still exists, but it is for property let by a specified educational institution, meaning a university or college letting to its own students. It is not a private landlord's route, and it carries a two-week notice period rather than four months. Do not confuse the two: they look similar in a list and behave nothing alike.

If Ground 4A is not open to you, you are back to the ordinary grounds. Ground 1A (selling) and Ground 1 (moving in) each need four months' notice and cannot be used in the first twelve months of the tenancy. Ground 8 arrears is available if the arrears reach the threshold, but arrears are not a plan.

The new student letting calendar

Assuming a September 2027 intake in a student HMO, the sequence that keeps Ground 4A alive looks like this:

1. 1From about March 2027, and not before, give each prospective tenant the written Ground 4A statement, then sign. Signing earlier than six months before move-in destroys the ground, so the statement and the signature both belong in the spring.
2. 2September 2027: the tenancy begins. Periodic, no fixed term. Deposit protected within 30 days, prescribed information served, the usual certificate pack.
3. 3By late February 2028: serve the Section 8 notice on Ground 4A specifying a possession date of 30 June 2028 (or later, up to 30 September).
4. 4From 1 June 2028: the possession date can take effect.

The awkward part is step 1. It pushes the whole market later, and the first landlord in a university town to hold their nerve until March will feel exposed while competitors sign in January. The competitors, though, are signing away their possession ground.

What has not changed

Not everything about student lets was rewritten, and it is worth knowing what still works exactly as before:

• Guarantors. Still valid, still worth taking, and arguably more important now that the fixed term is gone. One thing has changed: for guarantees given from 1 May 2026, the guarantor's liability ends if the tenant dies.
• Deposits. Same five-week cap, same 30-day protection and prescribed information deadlines. An unprotected deposit still blocks a possession order on almost every ground.
• HMO licensing. Unchanged. Mandatory licensing still bites at five or more occupants forming two or more households, with no storey condition, and councils in student areas enforce it actively.
• Safety obligations. Annual gas safety, EICR every five years, EPC band E minimum, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. A student HMO is a higher-risk building, not a lower one.
• Rent in advance. The Act restricts what you can require up front. A whole year's rent taken in advance from a student, once a common way to solve the affordability problem, needs checking against the current rules rather than assumed.

LetCompliance keeps the tenancy, the certificate dates and the notice arithmetic in one place. For a student HMO that means each room's rent and arrears, the HMO licence, and the gas, electrical and EPC dates with reminders at 90, 30, 14, 7 and 1 days, with the Section 8 notice builder (Form 3A) and possession tracker on paid plans. The builder does not draft Ground 4A, so add the Ground 4A notice date as your own reminder months before anyone thinks about it: it's exactly the sort of date that gets missed when nothing feels urgent.

Honest caveats

Two things worth saying plainly.

Purpose-built student accommodation is a different question. PBSA is commonly let outside the assured tenancy regime altogether, which changes the analysis completely. GOV.UK's overview guide does not draw the distinction, so if you operate blocks rather than houses, check the position for purpose-built student accommodation with a solicitor rather than reading across from this article.

The conditions above are quoted from the statute, the four-month notice period from the section 8(4AA) table, and the six-month rule from both. The worked calendar and the commercial read on signing season go further than that: treat them as general guidance on how the pieces fit, not something GOV.UK has spelled out. Ground 4A came into force in May 2026 and has barely been tested, so on anything load-bearing, particularly a first notice, a housing solicitor's twenty minutes is cheap next to losing a year's possession.