Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this SI. It follows the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and establishes the detailed requirements for the Government’s new private rented sector database, as the Minister said. They also introduce fees for registering and renewing property entries with the amount to be determined by the database operator, although it has already been suggested that this will be £65.

On this side of the Committee, we fully support the principle that tenants should be able to tackle rogue landlords and have access to safe and decent accommodation, which is why the previous Conservative Government brought forward our own proposals for a private rented sector ombudsman. However, we were very clear, during the passage of the Bill, that this database needs to be user-friendly and light-touch; it needs to enable electronic data entry and minimise unnecessary bureaucracy. The Minister herself gave us assurances that this would be the case. This comes down to our fundamental request: we need a database that works. The noble Lords and the noble Baroness who have spoken have expressed a great deal of concern that the database does not work. These concerns were echoed in the submissions to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has drawn the SI to the special attention of the House.

I welcome the fact that the department has committed to continuing to work with the sector to make continuous improvement. The question remains: can it get it working in the first place? Can the Minister tell us why the Government have not halted implementation of the system until it can be fully piloted, so that the recommendations can be implemented and the sector and tenants can have confidence that it works?

This SI comes at the time of a housing crisis. Are the Government aware that they are already driving landlords away? The latest Rightmove survey shows that there are 2% fewer properties for rent nationally—with a particular issue in London, where there are 9% fewer rental properties and where rents have risen by 3.2%. This is before today’s announcement of higher taxes on landlords. Even the OBR is forecasting long-term increases in rents.

It appears that the database is not fit for purpose. While it may work for a few individual landlords, insufficient consideration has been given to the practical requirements of large-scale, professionally managed rental businesses or the role of agents. As my noble friends Lord Fuller and Lord Howard of Rising said, large landlords will be required to register properties individually, entering up to 70 separate data points for each home. That may work for a landlord with one or two properties who knows what they are doing, but it does not work for a landlord managing, say, 3,000 properties. As my noble friend Lord Fuller suggested, we could be talking about 200 days of work just to register those properties; that is an extraordinary figure for a system that is supposed to simplify and modernise the regulation of the private renter sector.

Private landlords already face extensive regulatory obligations, including gas and electrical safety requirements, energy performance standards and, where applicable, property licensing. These regulations require much of the same information to be provided again through a central government database. Why are landlords being asked to enter information that the Government already hold on existing databases?

During the passage of the Bill, the issue of simplifying and consolidating was raised frequently by many noble Lords. The Government claimed that the system for bulk uploads will not offer time savings and that integration will better meet the needs of stakeholders as described. The purpose of digital government should be to reduce duplication, not institutionalise it. Can the Minister explain what appropriate integration with existing property management systems will look like? Can she assure the Committee that this will be fully implemented and trialled before the database is rolled out?

I am also concerned about the severely limited role that letting agents will be permitted to play in the registration process. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, mentioned, landlords rely on professional letting agents to manage both their properties and their regulatory obligations, and to ensure that they comply. Under the proposed system, landlords themselves must initiate and complete the registration process, with agents permitted to provide only certain information on their behalf. This is particularly difficult to understand, given that the Government’s impact assessment assumed that letting agents would register properties on behalf of the landlords. For agents managing thousands of properties, this will mean repeatedly returning to individual landlords to initiate registrations, obtain access and secure further information. Can the Minister explain why professional letting agents cannot be authorised to manage the entire registration process on behalf of their clients, as they do with many other regulatory requirements?

As my noble friend Lord Fuller mentioned, this whole plethora of passwords being shared between different people, properties and so forth raises significant cyber security issues. What happens, when a person at a large landlord or agent leaves, to the hundreds or thousands of passwords and databases that they have to share? Are they shared across businesses?

Can the Minister also assure the Committee that not every individual property under landlords and agents will require its own registration and password, as proposed? This is an obvious burden and a financial one too, and it is on top of the £65 registration fee that, as has already been mentioned, is not a one-off but an annual fee. These costs of additional bureaucracy, time and so forth will simply be passed on to tenants. Can the Minister tell the Committee to which metrics the fee will be pegged? What safeguards exist to prevent this becoming an unsustainable cost? The proposed system lacks the necessary integration to automate changes.

We also raised concerns regarding potentially significant fines. As has already been described, this is a bureaucratic nightmare. The risk of unintended, innocent, data-entry errors is significant, yet the landlord faces a potential £7,000 fine for each one of those errors. That is unreasonable. We need to get the database system working. As others have said, the whole aim of the Bill is to remove rogue landlords; it should not make the life and processes of genuine, good landlords so difficult that rogue landlords can hide in the background. This seems especially punitive considering that the Prime Minister has now introduced a system whereby parking fines can be appealed on the basis of an honest mistake.

As my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising raised, the current system provides an alternative for landlords, as they can create their own database, print out the necessary forms and send them on to the department. Many large landlords may find that simpler, because they are able to maintain their own database and assure themselves that it is up to date; they are able to update it electronically and provide their own reports, which they just fire off the printer. They send thousands of forms to Marsham Street, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said. That cannot be the right way of doing things.

In many parts of the country, there is a desperate shortage of private rental housing. Yet, whether an individual landlord or a large-scale corporate landlord, the Government continue to make being a landlord more difficult, thus reducing the incentive to become a private landlord. This is already having an impact on the market: not only are we seeing landlords exiting, but I am told by the development industry that the private build-to-rent sector has stalled. Ultimately, it will be tenants who will bear the consequences at a time when we urgently need more homes to rent.

It makes little sense to introduce a database that is not fit for purpose, driving up administrative costs, which will discourage the very investment that is needed to increase supply. I ask the Minister: why does the database not allow the bulk input of information? Why can apartment blocks not be registered where there is a single landlord? Why is there not API integration from day one? Why is the database not linked to other government databases? Why does the fee structure not reflect the different types of landlord? Why can agents not input information on behalf of their clients? Why is there not a longer transition period? Most importantly, has the database been piloted? If so, what were the lessons from those pilots? If not, when will it be piloted?

We support effective regulation, but regulation must also be proportionate, practical and properly implemented. The objective should not be to drive responsible landlords and investment out of the sector. When introducing a database, it must be practical, must work and must have been trialled. I hope that the Minister will consider these points.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all of the noble Lords who have contributed to the debate on this statutory instrument this afternoon.

First, I want to tackle an issue that has been raised many times: the testing of the database. In fact, we have been engaging with landlords, including organisational landlords, in user research and testing since 2023 on a database; as the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, said, that was because his Government had considered doing this before. We have been formally testing since May this year. In testing with organisational landlords, almost 90% reported the service as easy or very easy to use, and 80% rated the registration guidance clear or very clear. We have taken note of all the comments that have been made as we have gone through this testing process. We have made improvements to the database according to those comments and, of course, we continue our dialogue with the sector. We have not just jumped into this in the past two weeks, as has been suggested by some contributors.

It is very important that we have transparency for both tenants and councils; the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to this. We need to keep the database accurate and up to date, which is why we have asked for annual updates: some databases fail where you update them only if you have a change. This is an annual prompt to change it. Noble Lords will be very familiar with their registration of interests, which we have to update; we get a prompt to update that regularly. That is the point of having an annual update.

I will go through some of the issues that noble Lords have raised, some of which were raised by more than one Peer. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that our department remains willing to discuss this with anybody who wants to how the database may operate, so, to pick up his question directly, we are of course willing to do that.

A number of noble Lords—in particular, the noble Lords, Lord Fuller, Lord Howard and Lord Jamieson—raised the fee and asked why it is higher than the initial £20 estimate that we gave. The £65 fee is needed to fund a national database that is fair, sustainable and capable of supporting effective enforcement. All landlords will be required to pay the annual £65 fee for each property they register on the database. The fee is charged per property, so landlords will need to pay the fee each time they register a different property.

The fee has been set at a level that balances fairness and sustainability for landlords with the cost of operating the database and tackling non-compliance in the private sector; that last point is equally important. The fees will support activity to identify and act on non-compliance with the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 reforms. That includes funding to help councils have the staff and skills they need to identify and tackle non-compliance and to drive landlords who persist in breaking the law out of the sector. When we talked to the many landlords to whom we spoke during the course of the then Renters’ Rights Bill, they were just as concerned as the rest of us about driving out those rogue landlords, because they do not do the sector any good at all and undercut some of the really decent and good landlords that we have.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am happy to take back that feedback. The point about paying in one go is fair. It was my understanding that that could happen, but I will take that back and respond to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, in writing, if that is okay.

The noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson, raised the security of the database. That is important. We are all concerned about cyber security. The database has been developed with security and privacy at its core, using established government and cyber security standards. The department is assessing the database against the National Cyber Security Centre’s cyber assessment framework, and the database will also be subject to penetration testing to identify and address vulnerabilities before and during operation. We are working with the department’s data protection officer on the necessary data protection work, including an impact assessment, data-sharing arrangements and privacy arrangements for landlords, local councils and agent users. The database will also use monitoring tools to help identify potential vulnerabilities and support ongoing security assurance.

The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, talked about the potential duplication with selective licensing. The database will not duplicate or replace selective licences, because the two systems have entirely different purposes. The national database will provide consistent information about private landlords and rental properties across England, supporting transparency, compliance and local authority enforcement.

Selective licensing remains a targeted local tool used by councils to address specific local issues through more intensive proactive enforcement—for example, anti-social behaviour and those types of issues. We recognise the important role that licensing can continue to play where it is used appropriately, and we will continue to review how licensing and the national service interact as implementation progresses. Organisational landlords will use the GOV.UK One Login service to log in and authenticate. This is a service widely used across government and is built in accordance with government technology standards.

The noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Howard and Lord Jamieson, all asked why letting agents cannot register on behalf of landlords. One of the key goals of the database is to improve landlord awareness and capability, and requiring landlords to initiate registration directly supports that by ensuring that they engage with their legal responsibilities from the outset. Letting and property agents will still be able to support landlords by providing certain information once the landlord has started the registration process. Where an agent agrees, the landlord will be able to delegate the provision of specific tenancy health and safety information to them.

Responsibility for ensuring that the registration requirements are met will remain with the landlord throughout. Letting and property agents will not have a mandatory role in registration and will not be separately registered through this database. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his response on the regulation of property agents and I will feed that back to my right honourable colleague in the other House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, asked about what data will be published. This instrument does not decide what information will be published; the public-facing database will be brought forward through secondary legislation once the initial rollout period is complete. At that point, tenants will be able to access necessary and proportionate information about landlords and rental properties, including some of the issues that the noble Baroness referred to about landlord enforcement actions that have been taken. We will carefully balance the benefits of transparency with landlords’ privacy rights, safety concerns and data protection requirements.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, also asked how to identify landlords who do not register. When the public-facing database is available, tenants and others will be able to tell the database that their rental property is not registered, as they will be able to check. That can be passed on to the local housing authority.

To conclude, this instrument is the practical next step in delivering the PRS database. It sets the registration framework that landlords, local authorities and the database operator will need as regional rollout begins. By doing so, these regulations will support landlord compliance, strengthen local authority enforcement and give tenants better information about the homes they rent. I beg to move.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

May I follow up on a couple of points that the Minister made? She talked about testing the database, and I appreciate the comments she made about how it was the Conservatives who started looking at a database. My point is to try to understand what testing has been done.

I know that a number of noble Lords on this side, and presumably the Minister herself, will have received a lot of emails from large landlords, various groupings of landlords and so forth, raising these sorts of issues. Clearly, they are not happy if they have been part of the testing system. Has this been testing where an individual person is trying to import a single property? I think that we largely acknowledge that the system could work reasonably well for that. It was different for multiple properties or for where a landlord was not very familiar with all the regulations and so forth and was reliant on their agents. It would be very interesting if the Minister could give a bit more information about whether this involved bulk-inputting of property.

The Minister slightly glossed over the key point here by saying, “You could cut and paste”. I know that we have all filled in forms by cutting and pasting, but that still means having to go individually into each form to cut and paste—and believe me, from past experience, that is where you get more errors.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

For an intervention at the end of a speech, this is getting a bit long now, so perhaps the noble Lord could conclude.

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[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I am afraid that this is quite an important issue, and a number of issues have been raised. We are going to get a lot of data problems here.

My point about an apartment block, again, is that most of those apartments may not be the same or identical, and they have to be registered individually, but there needs to be an ability to provide bulk information and then have separate individual registrations. We do not disagree with that. Otherwise, as I have said before, the risk is that there will be hundreds of repeated entries. Could the Minister clarify that real question: why is this not being tested in the real world—not offline testing—where agents would have bulk entries and so forth?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

There has been a lot of testing going on since 2023. If the noble Lord is happy with this, I will get some more information about how the testing has worked, what has been tested and so on. However, the figures were fairly outstanding —we had an 80% rating of “clear” or “very clear” on the registration guidance; and 90% reported that the service was “very easy” or “easy” to use—but I can give more detail about how this was tested, if that would help. I will get the noble Lord some more information on that.

It is not in the Government’s or landlords’ interest and certainly not in the tenant’s interest—at the heart of this is enabling tenants to have access to more transparent information—for this database not to work. So we have made sure that it works before its implementation in December, and we will continue to work with the sector to improve it as we go along.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

It may have had 90% acceptability among the people who used it, but my key point was: who?

Motion agreed.