Assured Periodic Tenancy Agreement: The Document That Replaced the AST

If you are looking for an assured shorthold tenancy agreement, you need a different document. ASTs were abolished for private lettings in England on 1 May 2026 by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. The agreement you need now is an assured periodic tenancy agreement, and it differs from the AST you are used to in ways that go well beyond the name on the front page.

This page answers the practical question — what the new document is, what it has to contain, and whether the agreement already sitting in your filing cabinet needs replacing. If you want the history of what ASTs were and why they ended, that is covered separately on our assured shorthold tenancies page.

The direct answer

• Private residential lettings in England are now assured periodic tenancies. There is one tenancy type, not two.
• There is no fixed term. Government guidance states it is no longer possible to have an assured tenancy agreement with an end date, and that end dates in existing agreements no longer apply.
• The rent period cannot exceed a month. Weekly, fortnightly and monthly are fine; quarterly and annual rent periods are not.
• Your existing written AST does not need to be re-issued. It converted automatically. But it will contain clauses that no longer function.
• You did have to give existing tenants the government Information Sheet by 31 May 2026 — a separate duty, enforced by a civil penalty of up to £7,000.

What changed in the document itself

The conversion on 1 May 2026 was automatic, which is precisely why it is easy to underestimate. Nobody had to sign anything, so a great many agreements are still in circulation describing a legal structure that no longer exists. Four categories of clause in a pre-2026 AST are now dead letters.

The term clause. "The Term shall be twelve months from…" no longer creates a term. The tenancy runs periodically until it is ended by the tenant's notice, by agreement, or by a court order on a Section 8 ground. A landlord who tells a tenant they are contractually committed until a stated end date is not merely mistaken — falsely claiming a fixed-term tenancy is one of the breaches for which a local authority can impose a financial penalty of up to £7,000.

The rent review clause. Any mechanism in the agreement for raising the rent — indexation, a stepped increase, a review at the anniversary — no longer operates. Rent can only be increased through the statutory procedure, using Form 4A, once in any twelve months, with at least two months' notice. This catches out landlords who agreed an increase before the changeover: government guidance for landlords states that if an increase was agreed before 1 May 2026 but takes effect after it, the increase does not apply. We cover that trap in detail on rent review clauses are now void.

The Section 21 machinery. Break clauses drafted around a Section 21 notice, and any wording promising the landlord possession at the end of the term, no longer have a route to court behind them. Section 21 has gone for private lettings, and as of 31 July 2026 even notices served before the changeover can no longer be used — see Section 21 after 31 July 2026.

Blanket prohibitions on pets and on tenants with children or on benefits. The Act creates a right for a tenant to request permission to keep a pet, and makes certain rental-market discrimination unlawful. A flat "no pets, no DSS" clause is now a liability rather than a protection.

What a compliant agreement now has to do

An assured periodic tenancy agreement has two jobs. The first is the ordinary contractual one: identifying the parties and the property, setting the rent and the rent day, allocating repairing and outgoing obligations, dealing with the deposit. The second is statutory: the Renters' Rights Act 2025 requires the landlord to give the tenant a written statement of terms containing prescribed information, and — for most tenancies — to do so before the tenancy is entered into.

That statutory list runs to eighteen items, from the obvious (names, addresses, rent and rent day) to the easily forgotten (how rent increases will work, the tenant's minimum notice to quit, the position on pets, and whether the property is supported accommodation). Get the agreement right and the statement obligation is largely discharged by the same document. Get it wrong and you are exposed to a penalty of up to £7,000 for a document you thought you had already dealt with. The full list, and the timing rules, are set out on our written statement of terms guide.

There is one more structural point worth planning around. If you may later want the property back to live in yourself or to sell, government guidance requires that you say so in the written statement for certain grounds. Grounds 1 and 1A — moving in and selling — carry a four months' notice period and cannot expire within the first twelve months of the tenancy. They also trigger a twelve-month bar on re-letting or re-marketing the property afterwards, breach of which is an offence attracting a penalty of up to £40,000. That is a decision to make at the drafting stage, not the day you want possession. See the re-letting restricted period.

Should you replace your existing agreement?

Government guidance is clear that you do not have to. Whether you should is a commercial judgement rather than a legal one, and it turns on a simple question: how much of your old document is now wrong?

Replacing is usually worth it if the agreement is more than a couple of years old, if it leans heavily on the fixed term and Section 21 for its structure, if it contains a rent review mechanism you were relying on, or if it carries blanket pet or occupant restrictions. A document that misdescribes the tenancy is a document that will be read against you if there is ever a dispute, and it is also the document your tenant will quote back to you.

Leaving it alone is defensible where the agreement is recent, plainly drafted, silent on the points that changed, and where you have already given the Information Sheet. The tenancy is valid either way — the conversion did not depend on the paperwork.

What is not optional, for a new letting, is a proper assured periodic tenancy agreement that carries the written statement information and is served before the tenancy is entered into.

For a single room in a shared house, each occupier normally needs their own agreement covering their room and shared use of the common parts — see the room-only agreement. For student lettings, the student tenancy pack is drafted around the academic-year payment cycle.

Common mistakes we see

• Reissuing the old AST with the words changed. The structure of an AST is built around a term and a no-fault exit. Editing the labels leaves the architecture intact and the clauses inoperative.
• Assuming the Information Sheet and the written statement are the same duty. They are not, and they have different deadlines and different triggers.
• Agreeing a "minimum stay" with the tenant. A tenant can end an assured periodic tenancy on two months' written notice given on or before a rent due date. A side agreement cannot take that away.
• Setting a quarterly or annual rent period to reduce administration. The rent period cannot exceed a month.
• Leaving the possession grounds unmentioned in the written statement where the guidance requires them to be flagged, then discovering the omission when you need the ground.

When to take advice rather than use a template

A template is the right answer for a straightforward letting of a whole property or a room to an ordinary occupier. It is the wrong answer where the facts are unusual or contested: a tenancy with an odd history that may never have been an assured shorthold tenancy in the first place, a property let alongside a business, a resident landlord arrangement, supported or agricultural accommodation, or any situation where a tenant is already disputing the position. Those turn on facts a document cannot see, and the cost of getting the tenancy type wrong is that the possession route you expect may not exist.

If your situation is in that territory, take advice from a practising solicitor rather than a template. This site is not a law firm and does not operate a telephone helpline. The Law Society’s Find a Solicitor service is the official starting point.

Related guides

• Written Statement of Terms: what you must give a tenant, and when
• Rent review clauses are now void — what to do instead
• Section 21 after 31 July 2026: the route is closed
• Assured shorthold tenancies: what they were and why they ended
• Section 8 grounds for possession