The possession process now Section 21 has gone

Section 21 was procedurally simple in a way that hid how much compliance it quietly depended on. You could not use it if the deposit was unprotected, or the prescribed information ungiven, or the gas certificate never handed over — but if all of that was in order, the route to possession did not require you to prove anything about the tenant’s conduct.

That route is gone. Every possession claim now runs on a ground, which means every claim is a case you have to make and evidence.

The shape of the process

Mandatory and discretionary grounds are different animals

On a mandatory ground, if you prove the facts the court must order possession. Ground 8 — serious rent arrears — is the one most landlords mean when they talk about mandatory grounds.

On a discretionary ground, proving the facts gets you to the argument rather than through it. The court then decides whether it is reasonable to make an order, weighing the tenant’s circumstances. Ground 10 and Ground 11 — some arrears, and persistent late payment — are discretionary.

The arrears figure has to be right

This is worth stating on its own, because it is the most common way a well-founded claim collapses.

A Ground 8 claim rests entirely on an arithmetic assertion: that on this date, this much rent was lawfully due and unpaid. If a rent increase in the history was served on a defective Section 13 notice, the lawful rent is the old figure and your arrears calculation is overstated. If a part payment was recorded in a way that overwrote an earlier one, the figure is wrong in the other direction and the tenant will demonstrate it.

Neither error announces itself. Both surface in the witness box.

The prerequisites that defeat claims before they start

Notice what these have in common. None is about the tenant. All are about whether you can evidence something you did, often years earlier, frequently under a previous managing agent. The claim is decided partly on paperwork created long before anyone contemplated possession.

Timing, realistically

The notice period depends on the ground and runs before you can issue. Court listing times vary enormously by region and have not improved. Then, if an order is made and not complied with, enforcement is a further step with its own queue.

Plan in months, not weeks, and understand that the single biggest variable inside your control is whether the file is clean when you start. A claim that has to be withdrawn and restarted because a prerequisite was missing does not cost you a week — it costs you the whole timeline again.

What to do long before you need this

The work that wins a possession claim is done at the start of the tenancy and maintained through it: deposit protected on time and evidenced, prescribed information served and evidenced, documents given and evidenced, licensing current, rent increases valid, arrears accurate, disrepair responded to and recorded.

That is a list of dated obligations with evidence attached — which is precisely what Tekniti exists to hold. The point is not that the software serves the notice. It is that when you decide to, the file behind it already exists and nobody has to reconstruct three years of history from an inbox.

This article is general information about the process in England and not legal advice. Contested possession is a matter for a solicitor, and the earlier you involve one, the fewer of the failures above are still available to the other side.