The Ministry of Justice publishes possession statistics quarterly, and they are the closest thing the rental sector has to a hard measure of how much stress it is under.
The most recent set, covering the first quarter of 2026, showed landlord possession claims rising from 21,457 to 22,733 quarter on quarter. Accelerated possession claims — the old Section 21 route — went from 6,489 to 6,599.
What that does and doesn’t tell us
It is an increase, but it is not the spike a lot of people expected around the Renters’ Rights Act coming into force. It is worth being careful about that, because there is a strong temptation in this industry to read every quarter’s figures as confirmation of whatever we already believed.
Two things make these particular numbers hard to read.
There is a long lag between notice and claim. A landlord who served notice in February might not issue a claim until May or later. Q1 figures largely reflect decisions taken in late 2025, before the Act landed on 1 May.
And the transitional rules distort the accelerated figures. Pre-May Section 21 notices could still be used, provided proceedings were issued by 31 July 2026. So some of that accelerated volume is landlords using up notices under a route that no longer exists — a category that will simply stop appearing in future data.
The quarters that will actually tell us something are Q2 and Q3 2026. Those are the first that reflect a full post-Section 21 world, with Section 8 as the only route and every claim requiring a ground and a hearing.
Why landlords should care about a statistics release
Because the court queue is a shared resource, and its length is the single biggest determinant of what possession costs you.
Average time from claim to possession order is running at around 34 weeks. That figure is a function of volume against capacity. If Section 8 claims replace the Section 21 volume that previously went through on paper without a hearing, the same number of claims consumes considerably more court time. The queue lengthens even if the headline claim count stays flat.
Which is why the widely-shared warnings about tribunal and court backlogs are worth taking seriously, even where the specific figures being quoted are hard to verify.
The practical takeaway
Plan on the assumption that possession is slow and getting slower, and build your letting around not needing it.
That means tighter referencing, faster arrears contact, better record-keeping from day one of every tenancy, and paperwork that will not give a defence any purchase. None of it is exciting. All of it is cheaper than a court queue.
Ministry of Justice mortgage and landlord possession statistics, Q1 2026. General information, not legal advice.
Need a second opinion?
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