New forms for serving notice

New regulations come into force on 1 October 2021 that will return notice periods for Section 21 and Section 8 notices to their pre-pandemic levels.  The notice period required for Section 21 notices will be two months and Section 8 notices will revert back to only two weeks, based on rent arrears grounds 8, 10 and 11.

Any notices served before 1 October 2021 will still need to comply with the current rules so will typically require four months’ notice.

The new legislation introduces new versions of Section 8 and Section 21 Notices for landlords and letting agents to use from 1 October 2021.

Both the Form 6a (Section 21) and the Form 3 (Section 8) are prescribed forms so the correct version must be used.

It’s important for agents to remember that, as per deemed service rules, this can mean that where current forms are not deemed as served until 1 October 2021 the form will be wrong and the notice will be invalid.

The notes from Form 3 will be moved onto a separate document which will be uploaded alongside Form 3 (as has already been done for Form 6A) and include information for the tenant at the start of the forms. These should be available to download from gov.uk on 1 October 2021.