‘The forms contained in these Regulations are for use by landlords and tenants on and after 1 April 2027.’ That line from the explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk gets to the point quickly. The Scottish Government’s new Private Residential Tenancies (Prescribed Notices and Forms) (Scotland) Regulations 2026 were made on 30 September 2026, laid before the Scottish Parliament on 2 October 2026, and will come into force on 1 April 2027. For tenants and landlords across Scotland, this is not a dramatic rewrite of renting law. What changes here is the official paperwork. Even so, that matters in practice, because the right form can make the difference between a valid notice and a dispute that drags on longer than it should.

One of the first changes affects tenants who are still trying to get the basic written terms of a tenancy properly set down. From 1 April 2027, a tenant who intends to apply to the First-tier Tribunal under section 14(1) of the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 must give that notice to their landlord using the form set out in schedule 1. The same schedule 1 form also applies where a tenant intends to ask the Tribunal to sanction a landlord under section 16(1) for failing to provide written terms or other required information. In straightforward terms, the route is still there, but from next April it has to be taken using the prescribed form.

Rent increases are also being pulled into a tighter format. Any rent-increase notice given by a landlord to a tenant on or after 1 April 2027 must use the schedule 2 form prescribed under section 22(1) of the 2016 Act. If a tenant wants that increase looked at by a rent officer under section 24(1), the referral itself must be made in the schedule 3 form. The regulations also say the tenant must tell the landlord by completing Part 3 of the rent-increase notice and sending that completed part on. For anyone in the private rented sector, that is a detail worth clocking now rather than in the middle of an argument over rent next spring.

There is a similar shift around ending a tenancy. A notice to leave served by a landlord under section 50(1)(a), on or after 1 April 2027, must be in the schedule 4 form. A sub-tenancy notice to leave served directly on a sub-tenant under section 61(1) must use the schedule 5 form. That is important because these are the documents that land hardest on people’s lives and housing security. The regulations published on legislation.gov.uk do not create a brand-new set of eviction grounds in themselves. What they do is prescribe the form those notices must take under the existing law.

The handover between old and new rules is set out clearly. Regulation 7 says the earlier regulations will still apply to any notice or referral that is given, made or intimated before 1 April 2027. That should prevent confusion for cases already under way before the new rules kick in. After that, regulation 8 revokes three earlier instruments: the 2017 regulations, the 2022 temporary modification regulations and the 2023 temporary modification regulations. In plain terms, existing cases keep their footing under the old regime, but new cases from 1 April 2027 must use the updated forms.

The regulations were signed by Shirley-Anne Somerville at St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh, and on one level they read like housekeeping. But in housing, paperwork is never just paperwork. A wrong form, an out-of-date notice or a missed step can slow a case down and leave both sides arguing over process before they even get to the substance. For Scottish landlords, letting agents and tenants, the message is practical rather than political. Before 1 April 2027, check the templates, update the files and make sure staff or advisers are working from the right set of forms. The law behind private residential tenancies remains in place, but the documents used to run that system are changing.