How do you serve yours? Section 8 & Section 21 Notices

When you have decided that you wish to take steps to end the tenancy and prepared your Notice(s), you need to bear in mind the rules for serving the Notice. It is important that you get this right.

Get it wrong and a Judge could order that you have not given the tenant sufficient notice and delay you getting possession of your property and your tenants staying on.

Personal service, if you are going to hand deliver the Notice it all depends on what time you deliver it and what day. If its delivered before 4.30 pm on a business day (Mon to Fri are classed as business days) it is deemed as being served on that day, this means that your notice period can run from that day. However, if you can't serve the Notice until after 4.30 pm on a business day your Notice must run from the following day Alternatively if you are serving a Notice at the weekend, it can't start running until the Monday.

Postal service, just to confuse matters further there are different dates if you serve your Notice by post. If served by First Class Post, it would be classed as being served the second day after you posted it.

For example if you put the Notice in the post on Monday, it is classed as served on the Wednesday. However, beware, if you post the Notice on a Friday, technically it would be served on Sunday but as this is not a business day the correct date for service is Monday.
There are different rules for fax and email service but not many tenants have fax machines or reliable email accounts so it’s best not using this method unless you are very sure of matters.

Safe things to do, one way to get round this is to make sure that you serve your Notice a couple of days before you need to.

Rebecca Brough is a Solicitor at Fidler and Pepper who deals with Residential Landlords on a daily basis. Rebecca offers landlords requiring legal help a Free initial consultation.


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