What happens after a possession order is granted?

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

An order in your favour is not the tenant leaving. It sets a date by which they must go — and if that date passes and they are still there, nothing happens automatically. The clock only moves again when you take the next step. This is where most landlords lose weeks they did not need to lose.

The stages, in order

Stage	What happens
Order made	The court sets the date the tenant must leave — often 14 days out, up to 6 weeks in cases of exceptional hardship.
Date passes	If they have not gone, the order does nothing further on its own. You apply for a warrant.
Warrant of possession	County court bailiff route, Form N325 (or N325A if the order was suspended and breached), fee £148.
Eviction notice	The court sends you and the tenant an eviction notice with the appointment — at least 14 days' notice.
Return the forms	You must send back Forms EX96 and EX97A at least 3 working days before the appointment. Return them late and the eviction may be delayed.
Eviction	The bailiff attends on the date and time given and removes the tenant.

Do not change the locks yourself. Removing a tenant without a court-appointed bailiff or High Court enforcement officer is illegal eviction — a criminal offence carrying an unlimited fine and possible imprisonment, plus a civil damages claim. Every year landlords who had already won turn a win into a conviction at exactly this stage.

EX96 and EX97A — the two forms that decide whether the bailiff turns up

This is the step that catches people, because it is the one stage where the court is waiting on you and nobody chases you for it.

Once the warrant is issued, gov.uk sets out what arrives: the court will "confirm in writing that the warrant has been issued", "send you form EX96 with the bailiff appointment date and time", and "send you a risk assessment form (EX97A)".

Form	What it is
EX96	The notice of appointment — it carries the date and time the bailiff will attend.
EX97A	The risk assessment. It asks what the bailiff should know before attending — anything at the property that could make the visit unsafe.

The deadline, in gov.uk's own words: "You must send back Forms EX96 and EX97A at least 3 working days before the eviction appointment." And the consequence: "The eviction may be delayed if you return the forms late or do not give accurate information about any risks." After weeks of waiting for a bailiff date, losing it to a form sitting on your kitchen table is a miserable way to go back to the end of the queue.

Answer the risk questions honestly, not minimally. The temptation is to leave EX97A blank so nothing complicates the appointment. Note the wording above — the eviction can be delayed for inaccurate risk information just as it can for lateness. If there is a dog, a known mental health crisis, a history of aggression or anything else the bailiff should know, say so. It protects the people attending and it protects your date.

The day itself

gov.uk is specific about your role on the day: "meet the bailiff outside the property" and "do not enter the property until the bailiff says you can". You are there to take possession once it has been given to you, not to lead the eviction.

Two things landlords are routinely surprised by afterwards. First, "you are responsible for any pets or belongings left behind in the property" — that becomes your problem the moment you have the keys, and it is worth having a plan for it before the day rather than standing in a full flat wondering. Second, "county court bailiffs cannot help you recover rent arrears or money for damage to your property". The bailiff hands you the property and nothing else.

Most of the delay in a possession is decided long before the bailiff — by whether the deposit was protected, the notice was the right form, and the ground actually holds. Our free check runs through your tenancy and flags what the new law changed. No sign-up, no email. Take the free check →

Where the weeks actually go

The delay is almost never the paperwork — it is the bailiff queue. Waiting times vary a lot by court and region, and there is no fixed legal deadline for when a bailiff must attend. In some areas landlords wait several weeks to months for an appointment. If your county court is quoting a long wait, the High Court transfer route can be much faster (covered in the warrant-versus-writ guide below).

You have up to 6 years. gov.uk confirms you can apply for a warrant up to six years after the order was made; after that you need the court's permission. There is no need to rush the warrant application itself — but every week the tenant stays is a week of rent you are not collecting, so most landlords apply the moment the leaving date passes.

Recovering the rent is a separate job

County court bailiffs recover the property, not the money. Arrears and damage are a separate money claim, and the economics are often brutal: a tenant who could not pay the rent usually cannot pay the judgment either. Sometimes the right commercial move is to get the property back, re-let it, and write the rest off rather than spend hundreds chasing thousands you will never see.

The upstream lesson. Most long enforcement fights started with a paperwork gap — a deposit protected late, a missing written statement, a notice on the wrong form. Under the Renters' Rights Act those gaps can now block a possession claim before it even reaches this stage. Our free check finds them in two minutes.

Sources: gov.uk, Repossessing your privately rented property after 1 May 2026 (forms EX96 and EX97A, the 3-working-day deadline, and what happens on the day); gov.uk, Evicting tenants in England: if tenants do not follow a possession order; Civil Procedure Rules Part 83.

The three things that decide how fast this actually goes

The published timeline is the floor, not the forecast. In practice three things move it, and two of them are in your hands.

Getting the application right first time. A warrant application goes to the County Court hearing centre that made the order, or the one the case was transferred to — and it must be accompanied by a certificate that the property has not been vacated, under CPR 83.26(4). If the order was suspended on payment terms, rule 83.26(7) also requires you to certify the amount still owing and that an instalment is unpaid. A bounced application is not a disaster, but it is easily a fortnight.

The bailiff list. This is the part you cannot control and the reason two landlords with identical orders can be six weeks apart. It is also the whole argument for the High Court route — set out in warrant vs writ of possession.

Whether the tenant applies. A suspension application means a hearing, and a hearing means a date in the court's diary. Your warrant does not die while that happens — CPR 83.3(3) gives it twelve months, and 83.3(4) lets the court extend it — but the calendar moves.

What to do with this. Do not treat the leaving date on the order as the day you get the property back. Treat it as the day the next stage becomes available, and start the warrant application immediately rather than waiting to see whether the tenant goes. If they do go, you withdraw it. If they do not, you have saved yourself the week most landlords lose to hoping.

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More guides

You've got a possession order — what next · Warrant vs writ of possession · Does a possession order expire?