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.
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:
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.
The exact statutory wording is:
> "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. That is not obvious from 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.
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 — 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:
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:
At LetCompliance we keep the tenancy, the certificate dates and the notice arithmetic in one place, which for a student HMO mostly means one thing: the Ground 4A notice date is a diary entry set months before anyone thinks about it, and it is 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, and I have not verified the position for PBSA here, so if you operate blocks rather than houses, take advice specific to that model 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. Where I have gone beyond that — the worked calendar, the commercial read on signing season — that is our interpretation of 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.
Section 21 → Section 8 Transition Map (2026)
Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026. Map every active S21 / Form 6A scenario onto a valid Section 8 ground with this 2-page transition guide.
- Pre-1 May 2026 Form 6A — still valid? Decision tree
- Map every S21 trigger to a Section 8 mandatory / discretionary ground
- Ground 8 (rent arrears) — 13-week threshold under RRA 2025
- Top 5 evidence packs courts now expect for possession
Frequently asked questions
Can landlords still do fixed-term student tenancies in 2026?
No. The Renters’ Rights Act removed fixed-term assured tenancies from 1 May 2026 and there is no student exemption. Every assured tenancy is periodic, and the tenant can end it at any time on two months’ notice, including part-way through an academic year.
What is Ground 4A?
Ground 4A is the mandatory possession ground for student HMOs, inserted into Schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988 by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. It requires that the dwelling is or is in an HMO, that every tenant met the student test when the tenancy began, that the landlord gave a written statement before the tenancy was entered into, that no more than six months passed between signing and the tenant being entitled to possession, that the possession date falls between 1 June and 30 September, and that the landlord intends to let to students again.
How much notice does Ground 4A need?
Four months. Ground 4A sits in the four-month row of the notice-period table at section 8(4AA) of the Housing Act 1988, alongside Grounds 1, 1A, 2 and 6. Because the possession date must also fall between 1 June and 30 September, a notice for a 30 June date has to be served around the end of February.
Can I sign a student tenancy a year in advance?
You can, but you lose Ground 4A if you do. The ground requires that the period beginning with the day the tenancy was entered into and ending with the day the tenant was entitled to possession is six months or less. Signing in November or January for a September move-in exceeds that, so the traditional student signing season defeats the ground.
Does Ground 4A cover two students sharing a flat?
Usually not. Ground 4A requires the dwelling to be or be in an HMO, and the standard definition needs three or more tenants forming more than one household and sharing facilities. Two students in a two-bed flat generally fall outside that, so the student ground is not available and possession would have to rest on an ordinary ground.