The Deregulation Act 2015: A Landlord's Guide to What Still Applies

Reviewed by Bradley Askew, Solicitor (non-practising), England & Wales. Reviewed 18 July 2026.

What changed in 2026

Sections 33 to 41 of the Deregulation Act 2015 — the sections that built the modern Section 21 procedure — were formally omitted from 1 May 2026 because Section 21 itself was abolished by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. They now apply only in a narrow transitional window: to Section 21 notices validly served before 1 May 2026, for which court proceedings had to be issued by 31 July 2026. Read the Renters' Rights Act 2025 hub.

The Deregulation Act 2015 is an omnibus statute covering many unrelated areas of law. For residential landlords in England, its significance came from one cluster of provisions — sections 33 to 41 — which substantially reformed how a Section 21 notice could be served and used. This page explains what each of those sections actually did (several are commonly mixed up with each other), which of the underlying obligations they enforced are still live today, and what changed when Section 21 was abolished.

At a glance

• Who this is for: landlords and letting agents in England who served a Section 21 notice before 1 May 2026, or who want to understand which pre-2026 compliance duties still apply.
• Governing law: Deregulation Act 2015, sections 33–41 (inserted new sections 21A–21C into the Housing Act 1988), now omitted for specified purposes; Renters' Rights Act 2025, s.145(1)(8) and Schedule 2, paragraph 73(b).
• Status in 2026: these sections have no ongoing effect for new tenancies — there is no Section 21 to regulate. They still govern any Section 21 notice served before 1 May 2026 that remains within its transitional window.
• What still matters: the EPC and gas safety certificate duties these sections used to enforce exist independently under their own regulations and are unaffected. The "How to Rent" guide has been replaced for new tenancies by the mandatory written statement of terms.

Section 33 — retaliatory eviction (and section 34's exemptions)

Section 33 was the most innovative part of the Act. It made a Section 21 notice invalid where all of the following applied: the tenant had complained in writing about the dwelling's condition; the landlord either did not respond within 14 days, gave an inadequate response, or served a Section 21 notice in reply; the tenant then complained to the local council about the same issue; and the council responded by serving an improvement notice (for a Category 1 or Category 2 hazard) or taking emergency remedial action. Where those conditions were met, the protection lasted six months from the council's notice.

Section 34 then carved out several exemptions — the protection did not apply where the disrepair was caused by the tenant's own breach of their duty to use the property in a tenant-like manner, where the property was genuinely on the market for sale (with anti-avoidance rules covering sales to connected parties), where the landlord was a registered social housing provider, or where a mortgagee needed vacant possession to exercise a power of sale.

Section 33 required local authority involvement — a tenant's complaint alone was never enough — and it only ever protected against Section 21 (Section 8 grounds were unaffected). Under the Renters' Rights Act 2025's post-1 May 2026 framework, the mechanism is redundant: there is no Section 21 to invalidate. The equivalent protection against retaliation now comes from the fact that every possession claim needs a proven Schedule 2 ground regardless of the landlord's motive, plus the local authority's civil penalty powers.

Section 36 — time limits on serving and using a Section 21 notice

Section 36 is frequently confused with the accelerated possession procedure, but it did something different: it inserted time limits directly into section 21 of the Housing Act 1988. Specifically, it:

• Barred a Section 21 notice from being given within the first four months of a tenancy (or the original tenancy, for a replacement tenancy).
• Required court proceedings for possession to be begun within six months of the Section 21 notice being given (extended to four months from the specified possession date, in certain cases involving a longer notice period).

These time limits closed a gap that previously let landlords hold a served-but-unused Section 21 notice indefinitely. Like the rest of this group of sections, section 36 is now relevant only to notices served before 1 May 2026 — which is exactly why the Renters' Rights Act 2025's transitional rules impose the 31 July 2026 cut-off for issuing proceedings described below.

Section 37 — the prescribed form of the notice (Form 6A)

Section 37 is the section that actually created the legal basis for Form 6A — a fact that is often wrongly attributed to section 39. It inserted a new subsection 21(8) into the Housing Act 1988, giving the Secretary of State power to prescribe, by regulations, the form a Section 21 notice had to take. That power was exercised through the Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015, which set Form 6A as the mandatory format from 1 October 2015 onwards.

Form 6A standardised the content of the notice — parties, property, the date possession was required by, references to the relevant law — and reduced the technical drafting errors that had previously defeated valid Section 21 claims in court. It did not change the underlying substantive requirements (the notice period, the conditions for service); it simply made the format consistent.

Section 21 no longer exists for any tenancy created or converted on or after 1 May 2026, so Form 6A has no further use outside the transitional window. New possession claims under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 use Form 3A, the current prescribed form for a Section 8 notice, published on gov.uk's assured tenancy forms page.

Section 38 — compliance with prescribed legal requirements (EPC and gas safety)

Section 38 inserted a new section 21A into the Housing Act 1988: a Section 21 notice could not be given while the landlord was in breach of a "prescribed requirement" — a requirement imposed by other legislation relating to the condition of the property, the health and safety of occupiers, or its energy performance. The specific requirements were then set out in regulation 2 of the 2015 Regulations: providing the tenant with a valid Energy Performance Certificate and, where the property had a gas supply, a current Gas Safety Record, both before the tenancy started.

This is the provision most people mean when they refer to "the Deregulation Act's EPC and gas safety rule". It is worth being precise about what it actually did: it did not create the EPC or gas safety duties themselves (those already existed under the Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations 2012 and the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998), it made compliance with duties that already existed a precondition for using Section 21. That precondition is now moot — but the underlying duties to provide an EPC and a current gas safety record are entirely unaffected and remain fully in force. See our Gas Safety Regulations 1998 and Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations 2012 guides for the current detail.

Section 39 — the duty to provide prescribed information (the How to Rent guide)

Section 39 is a distinct provision from section 38, though the two are easily conflated. It inserted a new section 21B into the Housing Act 1988, giving the Secretary of State power to require landlords to give tenants prescribed information about their rights and responsibilities, in a document form the Secretary of State could specify. This power was used, via regulation 3 of the 2015 Regulations, to require every assured shorthold tenant to be given the government's "How to Rent" guide at the start of the tenancy — and, again, to make failure to do so a bar on serving a valid Section 21 notice.

Section 39's Section 21 consequence is now moot for the same reason as sections 36–38. Its underlying idea — that tenants should always be given clear written information about their rights — has carried through into the Renters' Rights Act 2025 in a different form: new tenancies from 1 May 2026 must include a mandatory written statement of terms under section 12 of the Act, and every landlord with an existing tenancy had to serve the government's Information Sheet on their tenants by 31 May 2026. The "How to Rent" guide as a standalone document is no longer the prescribed mechanism for new lettings.

Section 40 — rent repayment where a tenancy ended early under Section 21

Section 40 is sometimes wrongly described as extending tenancy deposit protection. It did not — that is a separate mix-up worth correcting. Section 40 inserted a new section 21C into the Housing Act 1988, dealing with a narrower, specific problem: where a Section 21 notice ended a tenancy partway through a rental period the tenant had already paid rent for in advance, the tenant was entitled to a proportionate repayment for the unoccupied days, calculated by a statutory formula. If the landlord hadn't already refunded it, the court had to order the repayment as part of any Section 21 possession order.

Tenancy deposit protection is governed entirely separately, by sections 212 to 215 of the Housing Act 2004 (see our Housing Act 2004 guide), and nothing in the Deregulation Act 2015 touched it. Section 40's rent-repayment mechanism is now redundant for the same reason as the rest of this group: there is no Section 21 notice left to trigger it.

Section 41 and what's left of the Act for landlords

Section 41 did not add a substantive rule of its own — it governed which tenancies sections 33 to 40 applied to, based on grant date. Subject to limited exceptions, a provision of sections 33 to 40 applied only to an assured shorthold tenancy granted on or after the day that provision came into force, so a tenancy already running before that date wasn't automatically caught. Subsection (3) then closed that gap with a three-year deferred application: three years after a provision of sections 33 to 38 or section 40 came into force, it extended automatically to any assured shorthold tenancy still in existence that it didn't already apply to — bringing pre-existing tenancies into scope from around October 2018 (this deferred extension did not apply to section 39). Two other Deregulation Act provisions retain independent relevance:

• Section 150 enabled the regulations that became the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015. Unlike sections 33–41, section 150 sits outside the Section 21 framework and was not affected by the Renters' Rights Act 2025 — its substantive content, covered in our Smoke and CO Alarm Regulations guide, remains live and important.
• The wider Act also contains unrelated provisions on business regulation, licensing and land registration that have no bearing on residential letting and are outside the scope of this guide.

How sections 33–41 became historic: the Renters' Rights Act 2025 mechanism

Legislation.gov.uk records the change precisely: sections 33 to 41 of the Deregulation Act 2015 were "omitted (1.5.2026 for specified purposes)" by the Renters' Rights Act 2025, section 145(1)(8) and Schedule 2, paragraph 73(b) — with transitional and saving provisions in Schedule 6, brought into force by the Renters' Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 2 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/421). In practical terms:

• For any tenancy created or converted to periodic status on or after 1 May 2026, sections 33–41 have no application at all — Section 21 does not exist for these tenancies.
• For a Section 21 notice validly served before 1 May 2026, the sections continue to govern that notice during the transitional period, and court proceedings relying on it had to be issued by 31 July 2026 at the latest (or sooner, if the notice's normal six-month validity window under section 36 expired first). After that date, the notice cannot be used at all, and possession must be sought under Section 8 instead.

Practical checklist

• Sitting on a pre-1 May 2026 Section 21 notice? Check whether proceedings were issued by 31 July 2026. If not, that route is now closed — move to Section 8 with a statutory ground and Form 3A.
• Don't rely on this Act for your current EPC or gas safety obligations. Those duties come from the Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations 2012 and the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 directly, and apply regardless of anything in the Deregulation Act 2015 or its abolition.
• Replace "How to Rent guide" thinking with the current documents. For any tenancy from 1 May 2026, use the mandatory written statement of terms under section 12 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025. If an existing tenancy's Information Sheet wasn't served by 31 May 2026, serve it now.
• Don't quote sections 36, 37 or 39 as authority for anything beyond historical Section 21 notices. They have no application to a tenancy created after 1 May 2026.

Get help

• Deregulation Act 2015 — full text (legislation.gov.uk) and the individual sections cited above.
• Renters' Rights Act 2025 — full text (legislation.gov.uk).
• Our Renters' Rights Act 2025 hub for the full post-1 May 2026 framework, and our Section 21 vs Section 8 historical comparison for how the two routes used to work.

This page is general information for landlords in England, not legal advice on your specific circumstances. It does not create a solicitor–client relationship. TenancyAgreementService.co.uk is not a law firm and is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. If you are relying on a pre-1 May 2026 Section 21 notice close to the 31 July 2026 cut-off, or facing a possession dispute, get advice from a regulated, practising solicitor without delay.