Does a possession order expire?

Updated August 2026 · Based on official gov.uk guidance · General information, not legal advice

Short answer: the order itself does not lapse quickly, but there are three separate clocks running, and landlords who assume they have unlimited time get caught out. Most pages online answer one of the three and quietly drop the others. Here is what actually expires, and when.

Clock 1: the order and the warrant application — six years

gov.uk confirms you can apply for a warrant of possession up to six years after the possession order was made. If more than six years have passed, you need the court's permission before you can apply, and you should take advice if that applies to you. So the order does not simply die after a few months — but leaving it years is not free of consequence, because the tenant remains in place the whole time.

The six-year rule is not a convention, it is written down. Civil Procedure Rule 83.2(3)(a) makes permission necessary where "six years or more have elapsed since the date of the judgment or order". The same rule requires permission if the parties have changed — by death or otherwise — which is worth knowing if a joint tenant has died or a property has changed hands since the order was made.

Where the application goes, and the certificate nobody mentions. A warrant application is made to the County Court hearing centre that made the order, or the one the case was later transferred to, and it can be made without notice to the tenant. But you must file a certificate that the property has not been vacated — CPR 83.26(4). Landlords who apply on autopilot and skip that certificate get the application bounced back, which costs weeks. Note too that a tenant who wants to oppose it can ask for the application to be moved to the hearing centre covering where they live.

Clock 2: the warrant itself — twelve months

Once a warrant is issued, it does not last forever. CPR 83.3(3) makes a warrant "valid for the period of 12 months beginning with the date of its issue", and CPR 83.3(4) lets the court "extend the relevant writ or warrant from time to time for a period of 12 months at any one time".

That wording matters more than it looks. An expiring warrant is extended, not restarted — you are not thrown back to the beginning and made to pay the fee again. In practice this only bites when enforcement stalls, which it does more often than people expect: while a tenant's suspension application is listed and heard, while a set-aside application runs, or simply while a busy county court bailiff list moves slowly. If your warrant is drifting towards twelve months old, ask about extending it rather than letting it lapse.

Enforcement rarely stalls because of the clocks. It stalls because something upstream was wrong — the deposit, the notice, the ground. Our free check runs through your tenancy and flags what the new law changed. No sign-up, no email. Take the free check →

Clock 3: the one nobody writes about — the tenant comes back

Here is the situation landlords quietly dread and almost no commercial page covers. The bailiff attends, the tenant is removed, you change the locks — and days later they are back inside.

The possession order is not spent, and you do not start a fresh claim. CPR 83.26(8) allows a warrant of restitution to be issued "with the permission of the court, in aid of any warrant of possession". Under 83.26(9) the application can be made without notice to anyone, but it must be supported by evidence of "wrongful re-entry into possession following the execution of the warrant of possession".

What that means in practice. The word doing the work is evidence. If you are ever in this position, the strength of your application is the record you can produce: the date and time the bailiff executed the warrant, what you did to secure the property, and dated proof of the re-entry. Photographs, locksmith invoices, and the bailiff's own paperwork are the things a judge can act on. A landlord who simply asserts the tenant came back has a much weaker application than one who can show it.

What	Time limit
Applying for a warrant after the order	Up to 6 years (court permission needed after that)
Warrant valid once issued	12 months, extendable
Eviction notice before the appointment	At least 14 days
Warrant of restitution if the tenant re-enters	No fixed limit — but needs the court's permission and evidence

The practical read. You are not under time pressure to apply for the warrant — six years is generous. You are under commercial pressure, because every week between the leaving date and the eviction is a week of rent you are not collecting. The two are different things, and the second one is what should drive your timing.

One thing that can reset your position. Re-issuing or varying a tenancy — for instance letting a remaining joint tenant stay on after another leaves — can create a new tenancy and unwind the ground you were relying on. If you are mid-possession, do not change the tenancy without checking what it does to your claim. Our free check flags exactly these traps.

Sources: gov.uk, Repossessing your privately rented property after 1 May 2026; Civil Procedure Rules Part 83 — rule 83.2(3)(a) (permission after six years), rule 83.3(3) and 83.3(4) (twelve-month validity and extension), rule 83.26(4), (8) and (9) (the certificate, and warrants of restitution).

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Can a possession order be overturned? · The timeline after a possession order · Warrant vs writ of possession