Scottish prescribed forms: Notice to Leave and rent increase

This is the distinction that catches landlords out, and a good deal of online guidance gets it wrong.

A document prescribed as to contents has to say certain things; how you lay it out is up to you. A document prescribed as to form has to be in the given form. The Private Residential Tenancies (Prescribed Notices and Forms) (Scotland) Regulations 2017 prescribe form. Regulation 6 requires a Notice to Leave in the form set out in schedule 5. Regulation 3 requires a rent-increase notice in the form set out in schedule 2.

Note the name of the instrument, too. It is "Prescribed Notices and Forms". A fair amount of guidance calls it "...and Information", which is a different thing and does not exist.

Scottish notices carry no form numbers. If you read that a Scottish Notice to Leave is "Form 1", or that a Scottish rent increase uses Form 4A, that guidance is describing England. Form 3A and Form 4A are English prescribed forms under the Housing Act 1988 and have no application in Scotland whatsoever.

Section 73 of the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 is a saving provision: it forgives an error in a notice where the error does not mislead. Landlords lean on it heavily, and in the wrong situation.

McAnally v Boyle [2025] UT 53 settled what it reaches. Section 73 saves errors made inside the prescribed form. A notice that was never in the prescribed style at all is not an erroneous prescribed notice — it is not a prescribed notice, and there is nothing for section 73 to save.

The consequence runs further than the notice itself. Without a valid Notice to Leave the First-tier Tribunal has no eviction application it can competently hear, so the landlord is not merely delayed: they start again. The same decision also held that Part 3 of the form, where you set out the ground and the facts supporting it, is not optional. Naming the ground without the detail is not compliance.

There is no version of this worth improvising. Use the schedule.

Every private residential tenancy carries exactly nine statutory terms, from the Private Residential Tenancies (Statutory Terms) (Scotland) Regulations 2017. They apply by force of law. Writing them down does not create them and leaving them out does not remove them.

What the landlord must do is give the tenant the written terms and the correct supporting notes. The notes are where most of the errors are, because the rule is either/or rather than a menu:

• Use the Scottish Government model tenancy agreement, and the Easy Read Notes go with it.
• Use a landlord-drafted agreement, and the Statutory Terms Supporting Notes go with it, under regulation 3 of the Private Residential Tenancies (Information for Tenants) (Scotland) Regulations 2017.

Picking the wrong set is the same failure as picking neither. Section 16 of the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 lets the Tribunal order up to three months' rent for failing to provide the written terms or the notes, and up to six months' rent for failing both.

The emergency rent cap expired on 31 March 2024. Nothing has replaced it, and as at August 2026 a Scottish rent increase runs the ordinary way: a notice in the schedule 2 form, three months' notice, once in any twelve months, and the tenant may refer it to a Rent Officer within 21 days.

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 introduces local Rent Control Areas, and the coverage of it has run well ahead of the commencement. No area has been designated. Councils only began assessing rent conditions on 1 April 2026 and their first reports are not due to Ministers until 31 May 2027. The rent cap in section 25 commences on 1 April 2027 and bites only on notices given on or after that date. The pending amendment to section 19 is not in force either.

So: check whether a Rent Control Area covers your property before serving a notice, because it will matter from 2027. Today the answer is no, everywhere.

Scotland has three approved schemes: SafeDeposits Scotland, mydeposits Scotland, and Letting Protection Service Scotland.

There is no "TDS Scotland". The Tenancy Deposit Scheme operates in England and Wales. Guidance naming it as a Scottish option is describing the wrong jurisdiction.

mydeposits Scotland is custodial only. Scottish regulations do not permit an insured product, so the insured-or-custodial choice an English landlord makes does not arise here — in Scotland the money always goes to the scheme.

Where both sides agree the figure, the scheme returns the deposit within five working days. Scotland sets no fixed statutory deadline equivalent to England's ten days; a disputed deposit goes to the scheme's own adjudication and the timescale varies.