Since 1 May 2026 every private tenancy in England is periodic, fixed terms are void, and you can give two months’ notice from your first day. What almost nobody has been told is the other half: your council tax liability now runs to the end of your notice period even if you moved out three weeks earlier. Put your rent day and your moving date into the planner and it will show you your earliest lawful last day, what leaving early actually costs, and every deadline between now and your deposit coming back.
£1,850 a month, rent due on the 5th, notice given today, wants to be out on the 20th of next month.
Nothing here is sent anywhere. It runs in your browser, there is no account, and you can close the tab and lose it. Give it four numbers and it will produce a dated plan you can work backwards from.
Two months’ notice sounds simple until you notice it has to expire at the end of a rent period. For most people that means the real figure is between two and three months, not two.
Where the arithmetic is arguable, we give you the later date. There is a long-running argument about whether a notice expiring the day before the two-month anniversary counts as two months. We do not resolve it, we sidestep it: a notice a day short is not a valid notice at all, whereas a notice a day long works perfectly well. If your landlord is content with the earlier date, take it — but get that in writing rather than assuming it.
Read the tags. Some of these are hard statutory deadlines you cannot recover if you miss them. Others are scheme rules, and a surprising number of the things people treat as legal requirements — the check-out inspection, the cleaning standard, the final meter reading — have no legal deadline at all. The tool marks which is which, because the difference decides what is worth arguing about.
Four of these are repeated confidently on renting websites and are simply not correct. We have put the correction next to each one, because on a move-out the mistakes are all expensive in the same direction.
It was going to. Parliament amended the definition of a material interest so that an assured periodic tenancy still counts, which keeps liability with the tenant. You are liable until your notice expires, not until you leave. Move out three weeks early and you are paying council tax on an empty flat unless you have agreed a surrender.
The ten days runs from the point you and the landlord agree the amount — and it is a deposit scheme rule reflected in government guidance, not a section of the Housing Act. There is no statutory long-stop. A landlord who never agrees never starts the clock, which is precisely why you raise a scheme dispute rather than waiting politely.
No minimum term applies to you at all. You can serve valid two months’ notice on the first day of the tenancy. The twelve-month protected period constrains the landlord, not you. Attempts to impose a minimum initial term on tenants were made during the Bill’s passage and did not survive into the Act.
There is no statutory requirement to hold one and no deadline for it. It is purely evidential — which cuts your way, because the absence of a proper check-in inventory is close to fatal to a landlord’s deduction claim at scheme adjudication. Photograph everything, dated, including the meters. That is worth more than any inspection.
Using the selling or moving-in ground triggers a twelve-month restricted period during which the property cannot be re-let or re-marketed, including as a short let. It binds the letting agent as well as the landlord, with penalties running to tens of thousands. If you see it back on a portal inside the year, tell the council’s private rented team.
A written request to whoever collects the rent, or to the agent, must be answered with the landlord’s name and address within twenty-one days, and failing to do so without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence prosecutable by the council. You do not have to ask nicely and you do not have to explain why.
A free tool on an agent’s website always has a business model behind it. Here is ours, including the part where the law stops us doing the obvious thing.
The Tenant Fees Act 2019 prohibits a landlord or a letting agent requiring a payment from a tenant in connection with a tenancy, beyond the rent, a capped deposit and a few named exceptions. A finder’s fee, an admin fee, a referencing fee or a “registration” fee charged to you is unlawful, and if anyone asks you for one, report them to the local trading standards team.
Which has a consequence you should know about: because we are paid by landlords, we can only show you what we are instructed on. Any agent who implies they will search the whole market for you, for free, is describing something that does not exist.
The obvious version of this page asks whether your landlord has mentioned selling, and pays you for the answer. We are not building that. Your landlord’s intentions are personal information about your landlord, and the moment we contacted them we would have to tell them what we hold and where it came from — in that first letter.
You would still be living there, with a deposit outstanding and a reference to come, and there is no law protecting a tenant who talks to a third party about their landlord. We are not paying you to take a risk we are not taking.
If you would like your landlord to hear from us about re-letting or managing the property, you can tell us to contact them — and we will say in the first letter that you asked us to, and that a reward of £50–£250 is payable to you if it leads to an instruction. Disclosed, on the record, in the same paragraph.
Nothing about it is conditional on you saying anything about them. It is an introduction, not intelligence, and the difference is the whole design.
Honestly: the commercially valuable thing on this page is not your landlord. It is a list of real renters with real dates and real budgets. That is what makes a landlord instruct us, and it is worth considerably more than any tip about someone’s plans.
So the deal is straightforward. You get the planner, and the deadlines, and a place on the list if you want one. We get to tell landlords the truth: that we already know who is looking and when.
Renters pay nothing here and cannot lawfully be charged. Everything on this page that costs money is on the landlord’s side of the transaction, and we would rather set that out than let you wonder what the free tool is for.
The planner is a calculator, not advice on your tenancy. It applies the two-month notice rule and the end-of-rent-period requirement to the dates you give it. It cannot see your agreement, and a written agreement predating 1 May 2026 may lawfully preserve a shorter tenant notice period, which would help you. Dates and rules are those in force from 1 May 2026 under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which abolished section 21, made all private tenancies in England assured periodic tenancies, and voided fixed terms and rent review clauses. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are separate regimes and none of this applies there. The ten-day deposit figure is a scheme rule reflected in government guidance, not a statutory deadline, and it runs from agreement on the amount rather than from the end of the tenancy. Dispute windows are set by your individual scheme and differ between them — check yours rather than ours. We are not solicitors. An unlawful eviction, a harassment claim, a rent repayment order or a contested possession hearing goes to a housing solicitor or your local authority, and we will say so rather than stretching. Free specialist advice is available from Shelter and from Citizens Advice, and on a serious matter you should use it before you use us.
Rent day, the date you want to be out, and whether you have served anything yet. We will tell you your real last day and whether asking for a surrender is worth it. If you are looking for somewhere next, say the area and the budget and we will only come back if we actually have something.
Every one of these has a free tool on it. None of them asks for your details before it gives you an answer.
For tenants. The deposit is your money and the landlord has to prove every deduction — we build the case that says so.
Score every deduction against the rules adjudicators usefree, or £49 prepared →For tenants. Rent repayment orders of up to two years’ rent where the landlord broke licensing or eviction law.
Every remedy screened, with what we can and cannot touchfree, or £295 assessed →For tenants. Since May the tribunal cannot raise your rent above what the landlord asked — only confirm it or cut it.
Your increase against real ONS regional datafree, or £99 assessed →Two months, in writing, expiring at the end of a rent period — and the second half of that sentence is where the surprises live. If your rent falls on the 5th and you serve notice on the 12th of March, two months takes you to 12 May, but 12 May is in the middle of a rent period, so the notice runs on to the end of it. In practice most people give between two and nearly three months without realising there was a choice. There is no minimum term on you at all. You can serve valid notice on the first day of a tenancy; the twelve-month protected period applies to the landlord, not to you. A shorter period than two months can be agreed in writing, and many agreements signed before 1 May 2026 with a one-month tenant notice clause still have effect. A longer one cannot be imposed on you. And notice from one joint tenant ends the tenancy for everyone, which is worth knowing before you send it.
No, and this is the most damaging piece of wrong information circulating about the new regime. The reasoning behind it was sound: council tax liability follows whoever holds a “material interest”, which used to mean a lease of six months or more, and once every tenancy in England became periodic almost nobody held one. Parliament saw that and amended the definition so that an assured periodic tenancy counts. Liability stayed with the tenant — and the old escape route went with it. Statutory periodic tenants used to stop being liable when they physically left. That is gone. You are now liable to the end of your notice period whether or not you are still there, which means a tenant who moves out three weeks early is paying council tax on an empty home for three weeks. Tell the council your liability ends on the notice expiry date, not the day the van came, and if you want those dates to be the same, ask the landlord for a surrender.
It is simply the landlord agreeing that the tenancy ends earlier than the notice says, and it is the only thing that closes the gap between the day you leave and the day you stop paying. It costs nothing, it is not a favour you have to earn, and the landlord frequently wants it too — an empty property they can re-let a fortnight sooner is worth more to them than a fortnight of your rent. Ask in writing, name the exact date, and get the agreement in writing before you hand the keys back. Do not rely on someone saying “that’s fine” on the phone, and do not treat handing the keys in as a surrender in itself — the safe version is a short written exchange that says the tenancy ends on a stated date and neither party owes the other anything after it.
Later than you have been told, and the reason matters. The figure everyone quotes is ten days, and it is real, but it runs from the point you and the landlord agree how much you are getting back — not from the end of the tenancy. It is also a deposit scheme rule reflected in government guidance rather than a section of the Housing Act, and there is no statutory long-stop at all. Put those together and the structural weakness in your position is obvious: a landlord who never agrees a figure never starts the clock, and there is no date on which they become automatically in breach. The answer is not patience. Raise a dispute with the scheme, which is free, and note that the schemes generally want it raised within about three months of the tenancy ending — check yours, because they differ. The undisputed portion should be released to you regardless; a landlord cannot hold the whole deposit over one contested item. And if the deposit was never protected properly, or the prescribed information never given, that is a separate claim worth one to three times the deposit which the court must award, and which you can bring after the tenancy has ended.
More than you think. The selling ground requires four months’ notice, it cannot take effect within the first twelve months of the tenancy, and it must be served on the prescribed form. If any of those is wrong the notice is not valid and you are not obliged to act on it. Then the part that keeps landlords honest: using the selling or moving-in ground triggers a twelve-month restricted period during which the property cannot be re-let or even re-marketed, and that expressly includes short lets. It binds the letting agent as well as the landlord, with penalties running into tens of thousands and a defence only for an agent who took all reasonable steps. So if you see your old flat back on a portal three months later, that is not bad luck, it is enforcement material, and the council’s private rented sector team is the place to take it. None of this stops a genuine sale, and a landlord is perfectly entitled to sell. It stops the notice being used as a pretext.
There is no statutory requirement to hold a check-out inspection at all, no deadline for one, and no legal cleaning standard. All of it is contractual convention. That sounds unhelpful until you see which way it cuts: because deductions have to be proved by the landlord at adjudication, and because the comparison is against the condition recorded at the start, the absence of a proper check-in inventory is close to fatal to a deduction claim. Adjudicators also apply fair wear and tear and betterment — a landlord cannot charge you for a new carpet to replace a six-year-old one. So the practical advice is not about scrubbing. Photograph every room and every meter on the day you leave, dated, from the same angles as the check-in photos if you have them, and keep them. That evidence is worth more than attendance at any inspection, and it costs ten minutes.
No, and neither may anyone else. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 prohibits a landlord or a letting agent requiring a payment from a tenant in connection with a tenancy, beyond rent, a capped deposit, a capped holding deposit and a short list of named exceptions. A finder’s fee, an admin fee, a referencing fee, a “registration” fee or a charge for a tenancy agreement is unlawful, and the enforcement route is the local trading standards team. If an agent asks you for one, that is not a negotiation, it is a report. The honest consequence for you is this: because we are paid by landlords, we can only show you what we are instructed on. Any agent implying they will search the entire market on your behalf for free is describing something that cannot exist, and you should discount it accordingly.
Because we would then have to tell your landlord that you told us. Your landlord’s intentions are personal information about your landlord, and the moment we used it to contact them we would be obliged to tell them, in that first letter, what we hold, why we hold it and where it came from. On a single-tenant property, “an occupier told us” identifies you. Meanwhile you would still be living there with a deposit outstanding and a reference to come, and there is no law protecting a tenant who gives information about their landlord to a third party — whistleblowing protection covers workers, not tenants. Paying you for it would make it worse rather than better, on both the data protection analysis and the ethics. So we do not ask, and there is no box for it. If you actively want us to approach your landlord, you can tell us to — and we will say in the first letter that you asked, and disclose the reward at the same time. That is an introduction, made in the open. It is a different thing entirely from intelligence, and we are only interested in the first one.
£50–£250 if the introduction leads to us actually being instructed, and the catch is that it is all disclosed. Your landlord is told in the first letter that you asked us to make contact and that a reward is payable to you. It is taxable in your hands, because it is income rather than a prize. It is paid on instruction, not on contact. And nothing about it is conditional on you telling us anything about your landlord’s plans, their finances, or the property beyond what we could see at a viewing. If having it disclosed makes you uncomfortable, that is a reasonable reaction and the right answer is to not make the introduction — the planner above is free and complete either way, and nothing on this page is gated behind it.
Two tenancies overlapping, council tax on a flat you have already left, a deposit sitting in a scheme because nobody agreed a figure, and a deadline to challenge a rent increase that expired while you were packing. None of it is hard. All of it is dated. Put the dates in and you can see the whole thing at once.
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