The Final Nail in the S.21 Coffin

Gas Safety Certificates & Section 21 Notices in the Court of Appeal (for the last time?) – Harker v Hubert and Muca v El-Amrani [2026] EWCA Civ 515

On the final day for service of a section 21 (“no fault”) notice before the Renters Rights Act changes came into force, 30 April 2026, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that failure to serve an initial Gas Safety Certificate (GSC) is an irremediable breach for the purpose of securing possession.

If a landlord has failed to serve on a tenant a GSC for the period of their initial occupation, they will be unable to recover possession under the section 21 process, irrespective of:

• The initial tenancy started before 2015 (before GSC service was linked to “no-fault” eviction);
• Whether the GSC record has been lost or an inspection was never carried out;
• The existence and service of all subsequent GSCs on the tenant throughout the period of the tenancy and subsequent tenancies of the same property;
• The gas safety regulations only require records to be kept for two years, so that a GSC might not be retained by a landlord for any longer than that.
• This is now the only section 21 notice legal requirement that cannot be remedied following a breach.

Why This Matters?

The last section 21 notices in the private rented sector will have been served on 30 April, and the last set of section 21 possession proceedings relying on such notices must be filed at court by 31 July. This is the landlord’s last chance to rely on the now-repealed no-fault eviction process. If a landlord has served notice in the hope of catching the last section 21 train, they should carefully review and consider its validity in light of this latest Court of Appeal decision before issuing a claim. Failing to do so may not only mean that the claim would fail, but the landlord may incur wasted legal costs and even be ordered to pay a tenant’s costs of successfully defending such a claim.

Service of many section 21 notices was rushed through in the weeks and days before 30 April. In doing so, errors and non-compliances may have been overlooked, and some notices will inevitably have been served to protect a landlord’s position even where case law has made their validity unclear. This recent case clarifies one of these grey areas, and care should be taken to consider its effect on each case before going to court. There is now less than three months before the expiry of the deadline to file court proceedings, and it will be wise to undertake this review without delay, even before the notice has expired, so that landlords may take advice on their alternative options for recovering possession under the new Renters’ Rights Act section 8 possession grounds should this prove necessary.