Ground 4A is the possession ground that lets a student landlord recover an HMO in time for the next academic year, and since Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026 it is the only route designed for that purpose. It applies only to houses in multiple occupation let to students. It requires four months’ notice. And possession under it can only be sought so that the property is recovered between 1 June and 30 September — the ground cannot be used to get a student house back in February.
There is a transitional easing that matters right now: for tenancies signed before 1 May 2026, a shortened two months’ notice applies until 31 July 2026. After that date, four months is the requirement for everyone.
The date arithmetic that decides your year
Work backwards from 1 June, not forwards from when you remember. Four months’ notice for a property you want back at the start of June means notice served at the beginning of February. For a house you want back for a mid-September changeover, notice goes out in mid-May.
For a Guildford student house on a September-to-June cycle, that means the notice decision for next summer has to be taken during the autumn term — before you know whether the current group wants to renew, and before the next year’s group has started looking. That is genuinely awkward, and it is the single biggest operational change for student landlords.
The practical response is to bring the renewal conversation forward. Ask the current tenants in October whether they intend to stay for another year. If the answer is no, or unclear, you have time to serve notice inside the window. If you wait until January, you have lost the option.
What qualifies
The property must be an HMO, and it must be let to students. A two-bedroom flat let to two students is not an HMO under the relevant definition and cannot use Ground 4A — which leaves those landlords relying on the general grounds, with no seasonal ground available at all. If a significant part of your portfolio is student-let but not HMO, that is worth checking properly rather than assuming.
Whether your Guildford property needs an HMO licence is a separate question from whether it meets the HMO definition for possession purposes, and the answers are not always the same.
The paperwork condition people miss
Before serving notice under Ground 4A, the tenants must have been given written notification and the government’s published information about the Renters’ Rights Act changes. For existing tenancies that document was the Information Sheet, due by 31 May 2026.
If you did not serve it, serve it now — and be aware that its absence is a defect in the notice chain, not merely a separate compliance failure. A possession claim that depends on Ground 4A can fail on the information point alone. See what the written statement and Information Sheet each require.
What this does to the Guildford student market
The seasonal certainty that made student letting attractive has been replaced by a process that has to be run to a calendar. Historically a fixed 12-month term ending in June did the work automatically. Now the tenancy is periodic, it does not end by itself, and recovering it requires a notice served four months ahead within a defined seasonal window.
Two consequences follow. First, landlords who run student houses casually — one property, renewed by conversation each spring — are the most exposed, because the new process does not tolerate late decisions. Second, tenants have more leverage: a group that wants to stay for a third year can simply not leave, and there is no fixed term obliging them to.
Neither of those makes student letting unattractive in a town with Surrey’s intake. It does make it an administered business rather than an annual habit. Where the Guildford student market sits for the coming intake.
A checklist for the coming cycle
Confirm the property meets the HMO definition for possession purposes, and that the letting is to students.
Confirm the Information Sheet was served on every current tenant, with a record of when.
Diarise the renewal conversation for October and the notice deadline for early February, per property.
Check the certificates now rather than in August. Student HMOs are inspected more than most, and gas records, EICRs and alarm compliance in shared houses carry additional requirements.
Get the deposit position clean. Multiple tenants, one deposit, and a joint tenancy where one person leaving affects everyone is the most common source of student disputes.
The rest of what changed on 1 May, including the other possession grounds, is in our Renters’ Rights Act guide and our note on Section 8 grounds.
General information, not legal advice. Property Lounge, Guildford.
Need a second opinion?
We’re Property Lounge, an ARLA Propertymark accredited lettings agency in Guildford. If anything above raised a question about your own property, we’re happy to talk it through — whether or not you’re a client, and whether or not you ever become one. No charge, no obligation, and we won’t chase you afterwards.
If you let a shared house or student property in Guildford, HMO management is one of our specialisms — licensing, compliance and the seasonal cycle included.
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