Section 48 Notice: The Address Every Landlord Must Give Their Tenant

A Section 48 notice is the written notice a landlord gives a tenant setting out an address in England and Wales where the tenant can serve notices, including court papers, on the landlord. It comes from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, and you will see it shortened to s.48 or written as a s48 notice. The duty carries a sharp consequence. Until the landlord has provided that address, any rent, service charge or administration charge is treated in law as not being due. The money does not disappear. Once the landlord complies, everything held back is owed again, on the tenancy's original due dates. But until then, the tenant is not in arrears.

Most landlords meet this duty without ever noticing. The address sits on the first page of the tenancy agreement and the law is satisfied. The ones who get caught out are usually the ones who bought a tenanted property, or changed letting agent, and never gave the tenant an updated address. I have seen both.

Article updated: September 2026

One thing to clear up early, because search results mix them together. Two well-known laws have a section 48. This guide covers the one in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, which is about renting. Section 48 of the Mental Health Act 1983 is a different law entirely, dealing with the transfer of certain prisoners and detainees to hospital for mental health treatment. It has nothing to do with landlords or tenants.

What the Law Says: Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, Section 48

The duty is in Part VI of the Act. Section 48 says a landlord "shall by notice furnish the tenant with an address in England and Wales at which notices (including notices in proceedings) may be served on him by the tenant". Notices in proceedings means court papers. If a tenant ever needs to sue their landlord, the claim can be served at that address.

The current text covers more than rent. Where the landlord has not complied, any rent, service charge or administration charge otherwise due is "treated for all purposes as not being due" until the landlord does comply. There is one exception, in section 48(3): where a court or tribunal has appointed a receiver or manager whose job includes collecting the rent or those charges, the rule is switched off while that appointment is in force.

Two other parts of the Act matter here. Under section 54, any notice served under the Act has to be in writing. And section 46 sets the scope: Part VI applies to premises which "consist of or include a dwelling" and are not held on a business tenancy under Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. In plain terms, homes that are rented out. A shop or office let comes under different rules altogether.

Where Section 48 Applies: England, and the Wales Change

Section 48 is England and Wales legislation, but since 1 December 2022 it no longer reaches most rented homes in Wales. Section 46(1A) of the 1987 Act says Part VI does not apply if the dwelling is in Wales and is subject to an occupation contract under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. On that date Welsh housing law changed: tenancy agreements were replaced by occupation contracts and tenants became contract-holders. So for a standard residential let of a home in Wales, section 48 has stopped being the relevant rule.

Wales has its own version of the duty. Under section 39 of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, the landlord must give the contract-holder notice of an address to which documents can be sent within 14 days of the occupation date, and again within 14 days of any change of landlord or change of that address. It is a fundamental term of every occupation contract, and a landlord who has not complied is blocked from serving certain possession notices under a standard contract, including the standard section 173 notice, until it is put right.

One distinction stops a lot of confusion. The address given under section 48 can itself be anywhere in England and Wales. What changed in 2022 is which law applies to the dwelling. A home in Wales on an occupation contract sits under the Welsh rule. A rented home in England, other than one held on a business tenancy, sits under section 48, and its address for service could be a solicitor's office in Cardiff without any problem.

What Counts as a Valid Address

The section asks for one thing: an address in England and Wales at which notices, including court papers, can be served on the landlord. An email address is not an address in England and Wales, so it cannot do this job.

It does not have to be the landlord's home address. A letting agent's office or a solicitor's office can be given instead. A practitioner note from KDL Law puts it plainly: the address "can be any address at which the landlord is prepared to accept notices". Landlords who live abroad, or who simply prefer not to hand out a home address, commonly use their agent's.

There is a trap in the neighbouring section, and it catches people. Section 47 of the same Act requires rent and service charge demands to state the landlord's own name and address. An agent's address is not enough there. In Beitov Properties v Martin, the Upper Tribunal held that section 47 needs the landlord's actual address, a point covered in the same note. The two sections read similarly and get mixed up. The agent's-address route works for section 48 and fails for section 47.

None of this needs a document headed Section 48 Notice. The Court of Appeal decided in Rogan v Woodfield Building Services that a landlord's name and address stated in the tenancy agreement, without qualification, satisfies the section on its own. Shelter's legal guidance lists the tenancy agreement, the rent book and a notice of possession as places the details can validly appear. Most professionally drafted tenancy agreements deal with section 48 this way, on the first page, without anyone ever calling it a section 48 notice.

How a Section 48 Notice Is Served, and the Template Question

For most tenancies the notice is served the day the agreement is signed, because the address is in the agreement. Where it is not, or where a landlord needs to give a new address, a standalone notice does the job. It has to be in writing under section 54, and there is no required form of words. The section itself names one element: an address in England and Wales at which notices may be served on the landlord. It can be handed over, posted, or built into the paperwork at the start.

People search for a government template and come back empty-handed, for a simple reason. There is not one. The government's list of prescribed tenancy forms covers possession notices and rent increases; no Section 48 form appears on it, because the Act does not prescribe one.

Since there is no prescribed form of words, an example shows how little the section asks for. A notice along these lines gives that address in writing, with the landlord's name added for clarity:

Landlord: [full name]. In accordance with section 48 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, notices (including notices in proceedings) may be served on the landlord at: [address in England or Wales].

Keep a copy, and keep a record of how and when it was given. If the point is ever argued, a copy of the agreement or notice, with evidence it reached the tenant, is what settles it. And it is the landlord who loses out if no such record exists.

What Happens if No Section 48 Notice Is Served

The rent stops falling due. So do service charges and administration charges. That is the whole sanction, and it is stronger than it first sounds. Under section 48(2), each of those payments is "treated for all purposes as not being due" until the landlord complies. A tenant chased for arrears in this position has a complete answer: while the address was missing, none of that money fell due.

The effect suspends the money rather than cancelling it. Practitioner guidance puts it the same way: "a failure to comply only suspends liability until there has been full compliance". Section 48 does not waive those sums. And compliance does not reset the calendar: the Upper Tribunal's decision in Cheerupmate2 v Calce, describing the Court of Appeal's ruling in Rogan, records that once the notice has been given the rent is due on the dates set by the tenancy, not from the day the notice was served. So a tenant treating the withheld rent as spending money is building up a bill: the moment a valid address arrives, the whole of it must be paid, with the arrears counted from those original dates.

Two limits sit around the rule. The Act sets no deadline for serving the notice, so a landlord who is late has not committed an offence. The cost of delay is simply that nothing is due until the address is given. And where a court or tribunal has appointed a receiver or manager to collect the rent, section 48(3) keeps the payments due while that appointment lasts.

A Section 48 notice is also not an eviction notice, whatever the name suggests to a tenant who receives one out of the blue. It does not end a tenancy and it does not itself seek possession. It is an address notice, nothing more.

Change of Landlord or Change of Address

The duty rests on whoever the landlord is. When a tenanted property is sold, the buyer becomes the landlord, and the address the tenant was given at the start now points at the wrong person. Two separate notices deal with this in England. The new landlord provides their own address for service under section 48. And under section 3 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the new landlord must give the tenant written notice of the change of ownership, with their name and address, by the next rent day or, if that falls within two months of the sale, by the end of those two months. Failing to give the section 3 notice without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence carrying a fine. Our guide to the Section 3 notice covers that duty in full.

A change of address gets less attention and causes more of the quiet problems. Section 48 sets out no change-of-address procedure; the practical route is a fresh written notice with the new address. In my experience the slip almost always happens the same way. The tenancy agreement gave the letting agent's office as the address, the landlord later changed agent, and nobody told the tenant. Years can pass like that, with the tenant's only address for the landlord being an agent the landlord no longer uses.

A tenant whose paperwork contains no landlord address anywhere has a statutory route to one. Under section 1 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the tenant can make a written request for the landlord's name and address to whoever demands the rent, or last received it, or to the landlord's agent, and that person must supply a written statement of both within 21 days. Failing to do so without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence, as Shelter's guidance on the identity right sets out.

In Wales the statute handles this itself: section 39 requires notice of the new landlord or the new address within 14 days of the change.

Section 48 When You Buy a Tenanted Property

Buying an investment property with tenants in place means taking on the notice obligations from the day of completion, not from the next renewal. The two that bite first are the ones above. The tenant needs the section 3 notice telling them who the new owner is, and an address in England and Wales where they can serve notices on that new owner. When I look at buy to let property for sale with sitting tenants, the notice position after completion is on the solicitor's completion list alongside the deposit protection and the gas records. It is routine work, but only if someone remembers it exists.

The price paid changes none of it. Tenanted below market value properties carry exactly the same duties as full-price ones. The obligations follow the tenancy, not the deal.

A sitting tenant's paperwork in England will often be an assured shorthold tenancy agreement from before the law changed in May 2026. Since 1 May 2026, government guidance records that the Renters' Rights Act 2025 abolished assured shorthold tenancies and ended Section 21 evictions in England's private rented sector. Section 48 is untouched by that reform. The current revised text of the section carries no amendment from it, and the address duty continues for the new owner exactly as it did for the old one.

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