For decades, a landlord facing a non-paying tenant had a blunt instrument: Section 21, the “no-fault” notice. You didn’t have to prove anything — you just gave two months’ notice and the tenancy ended. On 1 May 2026 that instrument was abolished by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Every Section 21 notice served on or after that date is legally void.
What replaces it changes the game completely. To recover a property for rent arrears you now use Section 8, Ground 8 — and Ground 8 is an evidence ground. You have to prove the arrears, to a specific standard, at two separate moments. The landlords who lose these cases in 2026 mostly won’t lose on the law. They’ll lose because their rent record doesn’t hold up.
General information, not legal advice. Possession law is technical and the facts of your case matter — take proper advice before serving any notice. The framework is set out in the GOV.UK Guide to the Renters’ Rights Act.
What Ground 8 now demands
Ground 8 is the mandatory arrears ground — meaning if you prove it, the court must grant possession. That power comes with a raised bar. Under the Renters’ Rights Act:
- The arrears must be at least three months (up from two).
- They must reach that level at the date you serve notice — and still be at that level at the date of the hearing.
That second requirement is where cases collapse. A tenant who pays down just enough between notice and hearing to drop below three months can defeat a Ground 8 claim outright. So you’re not proving arrears once; you’re evidencing a continuous, dated position across weeks of court timetable — and you need a record clean enough to show exactly where the balance stood on any given day.
What a judge actually wants to see
A shoebox of bank statements is not a rent record. A judge assessing Ground 8 is looking for a rent schedule (or rent ledger) that answers, unambiguously and in date order:
- What was due, and when — the contractual rent and its due date each period.
- What was actually paid, and when — each payment, with its date and amount.
- The running balance — so the arrears figure on the date of service, and on the date of the hearing, is visible at a glance rather than reconstructed.
- Consistency — no gaps, no round numbers that don’t reconcile to the bank, nothing that looks assembled the night before.
The credibility test is simple and brutal: does this record look like it was kept contemporaneously, month after month, or manufactured for the claim? A ledger built live, entry by entry, reads as truth. One retyped from memory the week before the hearing reads as exactly that — and gives the tenant’s representative an opening.
What a rent schedule looks like
A defensible schedule is unglamorous and complete. For a £1,200/month tenancy where the tenant stopped paying:
| Month | Rent due | Paid | Date paid | Balance (arrears) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| February | £1,200 | £1,200 | 2 Feb | £0 |
| March | £1,200 | £600 | 4 Mar | £600 |
| April | £1,200 | £0 | — | £1,800 |
| May | £1,200 | £0 | — | £3,000 |
| At date of service | ~mid-May | £3,000 (2.5 months) |
Note what this table exposes: by mid-May the arrears are £3,000 — which is two and a half months’ rent, not three. Serve Ground 8 here and it fails. The record isn’t just evidence; used properly it tells you when you’re actually entitled to serve — one more unpaid month, and only then does the mandatory ground bite. Guessing that date is how landlords serve too early and lose.
Why this connects to everything else
The rent ledger isn’t an isolated document. The same Renters’ Rights Act that killed Section 21 also created the PRS Database you must register on to access possession grounds at all — no registration, no route to court, however good your evidence. And the same instinct to document as you go is exactly what the incoming Awaab’s Law repair obligations will demand of the way you log disrepair. Post-Section 21, the landlord who keeps clean, dated, contemporaneous records wins on every front; the one who improvises loses.
What matters
Section 21 let you avoid proving your case. Section 8 Ground 8 requires you to prove it — three months of arrears, evidenced at the date of service and the date of the hearing, in a record a judge finds credible. The difference between recovering your property and being sent away isn’t the strength of your grievance; it’s the quality of your rent ledger.
That means every payment logged with its date, amount and status as it happens, a running balance you can read on any date, and a schedule you can export the moment you need it. That’s exactly what Livra keeps for you — so if arrears ever build, the evidence is already there, dated and defensible, instead of something you have to build under pressure.