One of our longest-running campaigns is a step closer to becoming a reality: a national register of landlords in England.
After years of being asked for payslips, bank statements and other personal information to assure landlords that we’ll be a good tenant, renters will finally have a right to find out who owns our home, and whether it meets basic legal standards.
The government has announced a timetable for the introduction of what it calls a “registration service” (also known as the database in the Renters Rights Act). Starting with the West Midlands, landlords will need to register themselves and their properties, one region of England at a time, between December 2026 and November 2027.
Victory for renters
England will become the final nation of the UK to get a landlord register, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all having them already. But for all England’s tardiness, its register will be a lot more thorough than the existing ones thanks to our campaigning for it to collect useful information. For each property landlords will need to provide information about:
- Gas and electrical safety
- Energy performance, and any exemptions it has from minimum standards
- The rent, and whether this includes utilities and furnishings
- The number of bedrooms and occupiers
We don’t yet know what information will be available to members of the public about a given house or flat, or when this will become available. But collecting this information will help drive up compliance among landlords, help councils enforce safety laws, and help you understand whether a home you’re interested in renting is going to be okay.
Collecting rent data is a big victory for renters – it will be helpful both in terms of making sure rent determinations are based on actual rent data rather than often higher advertised rents, and also for telling local and national government where the biggest pressures on rents are and so where to build new homes.
Missing information
Unfortunately there are still some gaps in what the register will collect. Even though there are restrictions on re-letting a property after the landlord has evicted tenants in order to sell or move in themselves, there is no obligation for the landlord to lodge eviction notices with the property’s register entry. This will make it harder for renters and councils to prove that a landlord has broken the rules – and to claim back rent as a consequence.
There also appears to be no way for prosecutions or other enforcement to be recorded on the register – though landlords with banning orders will be prevented from registering.
As well as this private rented property database, a register of holiday lets is expected to be launched in March – but by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, rather than the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Given long-running concerns about the loss of rented homes to the tourist sector, it would make sense to combine the two databases on one webpage – but it is unclear if the government is planning to do this.
The register could have made it easier for disabled and older renters to find suitable homes by including details of accessibility features, and for all renters to check that their deposit is protected – but this information is also missing from the list announced this week.
Making it public
There are still more details to finalise before members of the public get access to the register. It will be essential for contact details to be on there – both for tenants and neighbours who have concerns about a property. There needs to be clear information about the penalties for failure to register if a renter finds their landlord isn’t on there – as there could be a chance to claim back rent. And given that many renters will be searching the register when they’re moving or having a problem with their current landlord, the online register must have clear information about renters’ rights and where to get help.
Future changes to rent assessments
There was a second announcement on Wednesday – the process of challenging rent increases will change, with the Valuation Office (part of HMRC which collects rent data) taking over from the First-Tier Tribunal in order to speed up decisions.
There’s not much more information about this except to say that the process that came in on 1 May will continue until the law has changed. But we have questions:
- How long will it take? If as the Mail reports the government have to send another Bill through Parliament, it could take two or three years.
- Will the new system still take account of a home’s condition? At present, a lot of renters can win a smaller rent increase than the landlord proposed if their home is poor quality.
- How will rents recorded on the register be used as part of this?
- Why isn’t the government just capping rent increases by the lower of inflation or wage growth instead of setting up a new bureaucratic process to adjudicate every challenge?
The timetable for the database is a big step forward for our campaign, but until we can all type in our postcode and check our landlord is legit and our home is up to scratch, the work isn’t over.
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