Scotland Private Residential Tenancy: The Complete Landlord Guide
Published: August 2026 | Reading time: 11 minutes
If you let a property in Scotland, your tenant almost certainly has a Private Residential Tenancy (PRT). There is no Scottish equivalent of Section 21 – you cannot end a PRT without a reason, and you can only use one of 18 specific grounds set out in law. Get the process wrong and the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland will throw your case out.
Key takeaways (read this first)
- Scotland abolished no-fault eviction in December 2017, eight years before England. Every let created since then is a PRT unless a specific exemption applies.
- You can only end a PRT using one of 18 prescribed grounds, served through a Notice to Leave. All 18 are discretionary – the Tribunal decides each case on its facts.
- Notice periods are 28 days or 84 days depending on the ground and how long the tenant has lived there, not a fixed “two months” as under the old assured shorthold system.
- You must register with the local council before you let a property in Scotland. Letting unregistered is a criminal offence carrying fines of up to £50,000.
- Rent can only be increased once every 12 months, with at least three months’ written notice, and the tenant can ask Rent Service Scotland to review the figure.
- Disputes that aren’t resolved through notice go to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber), not the county court.
What Changed
Scotland replaced the assured shorthold tenancy with the Private Residential Tenancy on 1 December 2017. Every new let from that date has been a PRT, and older assured or short assured tenancies have largely converted or come to an end since then. If you’re letting in Scotland today, assume your tenant has a PRT unless you know otherwise.
The PRT was built around one core idea: tenants keep the tenancy indefinitely, and landlords can only end it by proving one of the grounds set out in the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016. There’s no “no reason needed” route. If you’ve let property in England and are used to Section 21, this is the single biggest adjustment to make.
There’s also no fixed term to manage. Under the old short assured tenancy system, many landlords relied on letting a fixed term expire and serving a simple notice to regain the property. A PRT has no end date at all – it runs indefinitely until either the tenant chooses to leave (by giving 28 days’ notice) or you end it using one of the 18 grounds below. Diary-based tenancy management, built around renewal dates, doesn’t apply here.
Why It Matters to You
If you try to end a PRT the way you’d end an assured shorthold tenancy in England, before the Renters’ Rights Act, you’ll fail. There’s no fixed term to simply let lapse and no blanket “two months, no reason” notice. Every eviction has to be built on one of the 18 grounds, evidenced properly, and served with the correct paperwork and notice period. Get any part of it wrong and the Tribunal can reject the case outright, costing you months.
The same discipline applies to rent increases, deposit protection and registration. Scotland’s rules are more prescriptive than England’s in several places, and the penalties for getting registration or deposit protection wrong are serious: unregistered letting is a criminal offence with fines of up to £50,000, and an unprotected deposit can leave you facing a Tribunal award of up to three times its value.
The 18 Grounds for Ending a Tenancy
Every ground is discretionary. That means proving the ground exists is not enough on its own – the Tribunal also has to be satisfied it’s reasonable to grant eviction. Build your case accordingly: don’t just tick the box, document it.
The grounds split into two groups by notice period.
Grounds requiring 84 days' notice (when the tenant has lived there 6 months or more; 28 days if under 6 months):
Ground 1
You intend to sell the property, and genuinely intend to do so within three months of the tenant leaving.
Ground 2
Your lender needs to sell the property to enforce its security (repossession).
Ground 3
You need to carry out major refurbishment work that can’t reasonably be done with the tenant in situ.
Ground 4
You intend to live in the property yourself for at least three months.
Ground 5
A family member intends to live in the property for at least three months.
Ground 6
You need the property for a non-residential use.
Ground 7
The property is needed to house a religious worker.
Ground 8
The tenant’s employment with you (where the tenancy came with the job) has ended.
Ground 9
The tenant was in supported accommodation and has been assessed as no longer needing that support.
Ground 10
Your registration as a landlord has been refused or revoked by the council.
Ground 11
Your HMO licence for the property has been refused or revoked.
Ground 12
The council has served an overcrowding statutory notice on the property.
Grounds requiring 28 days' notice, regardless of how long the tenant has lived there:
Ground 13
The tenant is not using the property as their main home.
Ground 14
The tenant has broken a term of the tenancy agreement.
Ground 15
The tenant has been in rent arrears for three or more consecutive months.
Ground 16
The tenant has been convicted of an offence punishable by imprisonment, committed at or near the property.
Ground 17
The tenant has engaged in antisocial behaviour causing alarm, distress, nuisance or harassment.
Ground 18
The tenant has allowed someone with a relevant conviction or history of antisocial behaviour to live at or visit the property.
Several of these grounds (particularly rent arrears, breach of agreement and antisocial behaviour) need solid, dated evidence: rent statements, written warnings, correspondence. Start keeping that paper trail from the first missed payment or the first complaint, not once you’ve decided to evict.
Rent Arrears: The Pre-Action Requirements You Can't Skip
If you’re relying on ground 15 (three or more months of rent arrears) and you serve your Notice to Leave on or after 1 October 2022, you must meet the pre-action requirements before the Tribunal will consider your case. This applies to every PRT, not just long-standing tenancies.
Before you can rely on the arrears ground, you must show that you:
- gave the tenant clear written or emailed information covering the tenancy terms, the exact amount owed, their rights in any tribunal process, and where they can get advice on financial support and debt management;
- made reasonable efforts to agree a workable payment plan with the tenant covering both the arrears and ongoing rent; and
- gave reasonable consideration to the tenant’s circumstances, including anything they’re doing to improve their ability to pay and whether they’ve stuck to any agreed plan.
The underlying principle, as the Scottish Government puts it, is that eviction for rent arrears is meant to be a last resort. Skip these steps and you risk the Tribunal refusing to grant an eviction order even where the arrears themselves are not in dispute. Document every attempt at contact and every payment plan discussion in writing, and keep copies, so you can demonstrate compliance if the case is contested.
Serving a Notice to Leave
The Notice to Leave is the only valid way to start ending a PRT. It must be in writing and must set out three things clearly: that the tenant is required to leave, which of the 18 grounds you’re relying on (you can cite more than one), and the notice period that applies.
You can deliver it by post, email or in person, but keep proof of delivery either way – a screenshot of a sent email or a certificate of posting is worth having if the case ends up at Tribunal. If the tenant doesn’t leave once the notice period expires, your next step is to apply to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland for an eviction order. You cannot physically remove a tenant yourself; only the Tribunal, and ultimately sheriff officers acting on its order, can lawfully do that.
The First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber)
Disputes over PRTs, including contested evictions, deposit disputes and rent increase challenges, are decided by the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber), not the sheriff court. The Tribunal examines whether you’ve used the correct ground, served the correct notice and notice period, and whether eviction is reasonable in the circumstances. Because every ground is discretionary, a technically correct notice doesn’t guarantee an order – the Tribunal weighs the full picture, including any hardship to the tenant.
Rent Increases
You can only increase the rent on a PRT once every 12 months. You must give the tenant at least three months’ written notice using the prescribed rent increase form, and it’s worth allowing two extra days for postal or email delivery when you’re calculating the effective date.
There’s no statutory cap on how much you can increase rent by. But the tenant has a right of reply: they can submit their objection using part of the notice you served, and refer the proposed increase to Rent Service Scotland for review within 21 days of receiving your notice. A rent officer will then assess an open-market rent for comparable local properties, which can come back higher or lower than what you proposed, and may include a property inspection. If you disagree with that outcome, you have 14 working days to request a review, and a further 14 working days to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal using Form H, at no cost.
Landlord Registration
You must register with the local council covering the property before you let it, unless a specific exemption applies (for example, you live in the property yourself, or you’re letting only to family). If more than one person owns the property, each owner registers separately. Registration is renewed every 3 years, and any property listing must show your registration number, or state that registration is pending, alongside the property’s Energy Performance Certificate rating.
Letting a property without being registered is a criminal offence. The maximum fine is £50,000, and an unregistered landlord also risks having an eviction ground refused or revoked on registration grounds (ground 10 above), which can complicate ending a tenancy later even where you have a legitimate reason.
Deposit Protection
If you take a deposit, it must go into one of the three government-approved Scottish schemes: Letting Protection Service Scotland, mydeposits Scotland, or SafeDeposits Scotland. The deposit itself can’t be more than 2 months’ rent. You have 30 working days from the start of the tenancy to protect it and to give the tenant written details of the amount, the scheme used, and the terms under which deductions can be made.
Miss that window and the tenant can take you to the First-tier Tribunal. The Tribunal can order you to protect the deposit (or return it, if the tenancy has already ended) and can additionally award compensation of up to three times the deposit amount. This is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes new Scottish landlords make, largely because the 30-working-day deadline is easy to lose track of amid everything else involved in starting a tenancy.
You’re exempt from the protection requirement only in specific situations: if you return the full deposit within 30 working days, if you live in the property yourself, if you’re letting to immediate family, or if the let is a holiday let, agricultural tenancy or supported accommodation arrangement.
Other Core Responsibilities
Beyond eviction, rent and deposits, Scottish landlords are expected to maintain the property to the legal repairing standard, hold a valid Energy Performance Certificate, establish whether the property needs an HMO licence, follow the correct process for accessing the property, and address antisocial behaviour involving tenants or their visitors. You’re also expected to notify your mortgage lender and insurer that the property is let, and to declare rental income for tax. These obligations sit alongside PRT-specific rules and apply for as long as you’re a private landlord in Scotland, regardless of which tenancy type or grounds are in play.
HMO licensing
If you let to three or more unrelated tenants sharing facilities such as a kitchen or bathroom, the property is likely to need a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO) licence from the local council, separate from landlord registration. Letting an unlicensed HMO can itself become grounds for the council to take action, and an HMO licence being refused or revoked is, as noted above, one of the 18 grounds a landlord can use to end a tenancy – because the property can no longer lawfully be let in that form.
Access to the property
You don’t have an automatic right to enter a let property whenever you choose. Standard PRT terms require you to give reasonable notice, usually at least 48 hours, and to only enter at reasonable times, except in a genuine emergency. Turning up unannounced, even for legitimate reasons like an inspection or repair, can itself become a source of dispute.
How Long the Whole Process Typically Takes
There’s no fixed timetable the law guarantees, but the shape of a contested eviction is predictable. You serve the Notice to Leave and wait out the 28 or 84-day notice period. If the tenant hasn’t left by the end of it, you apply to the First-tier Tribunal, which will set a hearing date, consider written submissions and evidence from both sides, and issue a decision.
Only once the Tribunal grants an eviction order, and the tenant still hasn’t left, do sheriff officers become involved to enforce it. Each stage adds time, which is exactly why getting the ground, the evidence and the notice right the first time matters more in Scotland than it did under the old assured shorthold system.
So What Do I Do?
- Confirm your tenant has a PRT. If the tenancy started on or after 1 December 2017, it almost certainly is one, and Section 21-style thinking doesn’t apply.
- Check your landlord registration is current with the relevant council, and renew it before it lapses. Letting unregistered is a criminal offence.
- Protect any deposit within 30 working days of the tenancy starting, using one of the three approved Scottish schemes, and send the tenant written confirmation of the details.
- If you need to end a tenancy, identify the specific ground (or grounds) that actually applies, and start gathering evidence for it now, not once you’ve served notice.
- Serve a Notice to Leave in writing, stating the ground, the notice period (28 or 84 days) and the date the tenant must leave, and keep proof of delivery.
- If the tenant doesn’t leave once notice expires, apply to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland rather than attempting to remove them yourself.
- Before increasing rent, check 12 months have passed since the last increase, and serve at least three months’ written notice using the correct form.
- Keep dated records of any rent arrears, breaches or antisocial behaviour as they happen, so you have evidence ready if you ever need to rely on a discretionary ground.
Related guidance
A NOTE ON THIS ARTICLE
This article is guidance only and not formal legal advice. The Landlord Brief aims to translate complex legislation into plain English — but every landlord’s situation is different.
If you have tenants in rent arrears, a possession case in progress, or a complex tenancy arrangement, we strongly recommend speaking to a specialist landlord solicitor before acting.