Which eviction notice, and how do you serve it?
Serve the wrong notice, get a date wrong, or miss a ground, and a possession claim can be thrown out months later. Pick your nation and your grounds and this drafts the right notice for you: a Section 8 in England, an RHW16, RHW20 or RHW23 in Wales, a Notice to Leave in Scotland, a Notice to Quit in Northern Ireland. General guidance, not legal advice. Everything runs in your browser.
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General guidance, not legal advice. This tool produces a draft, not the official prescribed form, and it is deliberately unbranded so it reads as your notice rather than ours. Notice periods and ground conditions change. Serving an invalid notice can cost you months. Have the draft checked by a solicitor and transcribe it onto the current prescribed form before you serve it. Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
The notice depends entirely on where the property is.
England: Section 21 is gone. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 abolished no-fault Section 21 notices on 1 May 2026, along with assured shorthold tenancies and fixed terms. Every private assured tenancy in England is now periodic, and the only route to possession is a Section 8 notice citing one or more of the reformed Schedule 2 grounds. The arrears threshold rose from two months to three, the arrears notice period went to four weeks, and two new landlord-circumstance grounds arrived: Ground 1A for selling and Ground 4A for student HMOs. Grounds 1 and 1A cannot be used in the first 12 months of a tenancy, and the property cannot be re-let or re-marketed for 12 months afterwards.
Wales: occupation contracts, not tenancies. The Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 replaced tenancies with occupation contracts and tenants with contract-holders. The no-fault route is a section 173 notice on form RHW16: at least six months' notice, and it cannot be given in the first six months of the occupation date. It is also blocked entirely if you have not given a written statement of the contract, protected the deposit, or registered and licensed with Rent Smart Wales. The fault route is separate: RHW20 for serious rent arrears with 14 days' notice, RHW23 for breach of contract with one month, or prohibited conduct where the claim can be made the same day. Fault claims are not blocked by those outstanding obligations, though they still bear on how a court views a discretionary ground.
Scotland: one Notice to Leave. A Private Residential Tenancy ends through a single Notice to Leave citing at least one of the 18 grounds in Schedule 3 of the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016. Since the 2022 reforms every ground is discretionary, so the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland decides whether eviction is reasonable in the circumstances, even where the ground is clearly made out. Notice is 28 days if the tenant has been entitled to occupy for six months or less on the day they receive the notice, or if the only grounds cited are grounds 10 to 15 (not occupying, breach, three or more consecutive months of arrears, a relevant conviction, anti-social behaviour, association with such a person). It is 84 days in every other case. Check the current periods on mygov.scot before serving.
Northern Ireland: notice by length of tenancy. A Notice to Quit under the Private Tenancies Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 sets the minimum period by how long the tenant has lived in the property: 4 weeks under 12 months, 8 weeks between one and ten years, 12 weeks over ten years. The notice must be in writing, signed and dated, and carry the tenancy information the 2022 Act requires. It does not end the tenancy by itself: if the tenant stays, you must apply to the court for a possession order.
What actually sinks a claim. Rarely the grounds. Usually the paperwork around them: a deposit that was never protected, prescribed information that was never given, a gas safety record or EPC that was never handed over, a date miscounted by two days, or particulars so vague the court cannot tell what is being alleged. Get the notice right and then keep dated proof that you served it, and how.
Get proper advice before you serve. Possession is one of the few areas of home admin where a small mistake is genuinely expensive. Shelter and Citizens Advice publish free guidance for both sides, and a solicitor's hour before you serve is cheaper than a struck-out claim six months later.
A notice is one date in a much longer chain.
Stead keeps the tenancy behind it: the deposit protection deadline, the gas safety and EICR dates, the documents you served and when, and a record of every notice you have generated, per property, with reminders before each one matters.