Tenant Won’t Leave After a Notice? What a Landlord Can Do

You served the notice, it expired, and the tenant is still in the property. It is one of the most stressful moments a landlord faces, and the moment when the wrong instinct causes the most damage. You cannot change the locks, cut off utilities, or move their things out. Doing any of that is a criminal offence, and it turns you from the landlord who is owed possession into the landlord who is prosecuted.

This guide sets out what you legally can and cannot do when a tenant stays past a notice, and the lawful route that actually gets you the property back.

This is guidance, not legal advice. Possession is fact-sensitive — take advice before acting.

First, what you must NOT do

A notice — even an expired one — does not give you the right to remove the tenant yourself. Under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, removing or harassing a residential occupier other than by the lawful court process is a criminal offence. That includes:

The penalties are serious: unlawful eviction and harassment can carry up to two years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine, plus civil damages the tenant can claim. It does not matter that the tenant owes you rent or that the notice has expired — the only lawful way to remove them is through the court.

The lawful route, step by step

Getting possession when a tenant will not leave is a sequence, and each step has to be done before the next:

At no point in that chain are you allowed to take matters into your own hands. The bailiff appointment is the finish line, not the day the notice expired, and not the day of the possession order.

How long, and what it costs

Be realistic about both. Beyond the notice period, you are into the county court queue for the hearing, and then — if a warrant is needed — the bailiff queue on top. A straightforward case can still take months from notice to keys; a contested one can run past a year.

The court fees (GOV.UK EX50, checked July 2026):

You can apply to transfer enforcement to the High Court for potentially faster High Court Enforcement Officers, which costs more. Either way, budget for the wait and the fees, and keep charging the rent arrears clock running — a Ground 8 arrears→ case, for example, depends on the arrears at the hearing date.

What to do while you wait

The waiting is real, but it is not passive:

How LetCompliance helps: the Section 8 notice builder produces a notice on the correct ground with the right period and the earliest lawful date, and the rent and arrears ledger gives you the timestamped record a possession hearing turns on, so the case you take to court is the strongest version of itself.

Sources

Why "just change the locks" ends your landlord career

The post opens with what you must not do. It is worth being blunt about why, because landlords under real financial pressure talk themselves into it, and the consequences are not proportionate to the frustration that caused them.

Unlawfully evicting or harassing a residential occupier is a criminal offence under section 1 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. On summary conviction it carries a fine; tried on indictment it carries imprisonment for up to two years, a fine, or both. Local authorities have dedicated tenancy relations officers who bring these prosecutions, and they are brought.

That is only the first layer. The tenant can also sue you civilly for damages, which in serious cases have run well beyond a year's rent. And unlawful eviction is one of the offences that triggers a Rent Repayment Order: repay up to twelve months' rent to the tenant, a maximum that was doubled on 1 May 2026, with repeat offenders required to pay the maximum.

What counts is wider than most landlords assume. It is not only changing the locks. Removing the tenant's belongings, disconnecting gas, water or electricity, removing a door, entering repeatedly without notice, threatening behaviour, or bringing people round to make them uncomfortable can all amount to harassment or unlawful eviction — including where the tenancy has genuinely ended and the tenant has no right to be there.

The principle to hold on to is simple. Once a tenant is in occupation, only a court order executed by a bailiff removes them. Being completely in the right about the possession ground does not create a shortcut.

What the court process actually looks like now

One structural change matters here and is easy to miss: the accelerated possession procedure was attached to Section 21, and it went with it. There is no paper-only fast track any more. A Section 8 claim is a standard possession claim, and you should plan for a hearing.

The sequence, with realistic timings:

Issue the claim. Once your notice has expired you apply to the county court, currently £415 to issue. The claim must set out the ground and the particulars supporting it — for arrears, a full rent schedule.

The defence window. The tenant has 14 days to file a defence. Many do not, but a defence — particularly a disrepair counterclaim: is what turns a straightforward arrears claim into a contested one, and it is the single most common reason a Ground 8 case fails at the door.

The hearing. Listing times vary enormously by court. Six to ten weeks after issue is a reasonable expectation; some regions are considerably worse.

The order. If you succeed, the court normally orders possession in 14 days. Where the tenant shows exceptional hardship it may postpone for up to six weeks, but no longer.

Enforcement. If they still do not leave, you apply for a warrant of possession (form N325, £152) and a county court bailiff carries out the eviction. Bailiff waiting times are the least predictable part of the whole process and frequently add another four to eight weeks. Transfer to the High Court for a writ is faster but requires permission and costs more.

Add it up honestly and, from the day your notice expires, three to six months is a realistic range — before which you have already spent the notice period itself. This is the arithmetic that makes a rent guarantee policy or an early conversation worth more than being right.

What to do while it runs

The waiting period is not dead time. What you do in it decides both how the hearing goes and how much you eventually recover.

Keep the rent account impeccable. For Ground 8 the arrears must meet the threshold at both the notice date and the hearing date. A tenant who makes a payment shortly before the hearing that drops the balance below three months' rent can defeat a mandatory ground on the day. Know your figure going in, and take an up-to-date schedule to court.

Keep accepting rent. Landlords worry that accepting payment undermines the claim. For a Section 8 case it does not, and refusing payment simply increases your losses while looking unreasonable to a judge.

Answer every repair report, in writing, promptly. This is the counterclaim defence, and it is built now or not at all. A tenant facing possession has every reason to look back through the tenancy for unanswered problems.

Do not stop communicating. A negotiated departure — a date agreed in writing, sometimes with a modest contribution to moving costs or a portion of arrears written off — is very often cheaper than the court route. Compare it against three to six months of lost rent plus £567 in court fees before you dismiss it.

Keep the paperwork ready. The tenancy agreement, the deposit protection certificate and prescribed information, the notice and proof of service, the rent schedule, and the repair correspondence. If the deposit was not protected, the court cannot make a possession order until it is protected or returned, so deal with that before you issue, not on the day.