Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a landlord. I cannot see how this database will achieve anything more than create a bureaucratic nightmare. It will not improve the conditions of properties to let. It will not increase the numbers of them—indeed, it will reduce the number. What it will do is drive rogue landlords underground.

Furthermore, I understand the Government have been advised that the database, as it stands, runs the risk of being operationally unusable. The database will not, as currently designed, enable landlords and letting agents to view data to ensure the accuracy of information. Without this, it will become all but impossible for landlords and letting agents to check whether they are compliant and abiding by their legal obligations in relation to the database. It risks creating a system in which landlords are held accountable for compliance without being given the ability to verify registration details.

Larger landlords will not be able to bulk-upload property information on the database. This may mean writing individual letters for each property. Have the Government considered the ability to cope with approaching 5 million letters? Letting larger landlords bulk-upload would take some of this burden away.

Officials have said that the proposed model for the database would operate on a property-by-property basis, with agents receiving individual links for each property they help to register and manage. Surely the Government are competent enough to create a system which has a much greater degree of automation. As proposed, it will be time-consuming and cumbersome for letting agents to carry out registration on behalf of landlords. Why should this be any different from someone using a letting agent which already has a responsibility for complying with existing legislation? Agents should be able to comply with these regulations without going backwards and forwards to the principle.

The reason has been given that the system is created in such a way that landlords must bear the responsibility. As has already been said, in any other case of instructing professional advisers—for example, lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers et cetera—it is the person giving the instructions who has the ultimate responsibility. Is it different in this case or has it been created in order to add to the chaos?

A registration fee of £65 represents a substantial recurring cost. Many individual landlords will see income tax rates on rentals increase from April next year and the Government want landlords to pay up to £10,000 per property to meet their proposed energy efficiency standards. We should not see the fee to join the database in isolation from these other costs facing the sector—which, we have to remember, will ultimately be borne by the tenants in the form of higher rents. Can the Minister explain the breakdown of the £65 annual fee to join the database?

The impact assessment accompanying the then Renters’ Rights Bill assumed a database registration fee of £28.58 per property every three years. Now, £65 per property is proposed every year, as the property has to be reregistered every 12 months. How much will go to the local authorities and what will be ring-fenced to support enforcement activity? How much will be kept by central government and what will it be used for? What assurances are there that the funds will actually be used to support landlords and tenants?

I remind the Minister that there are approaching 5 million rented houses in this country, of which a very substantial number are owned by someone with no more than one or two properties. Many of them will find great difficulty in complying with the proposals. Larger landlords, as has already been commented, believe that the Government’s estimate of cost compliance is wildly underestimated.

Not wishing to burden your Lordships, I have not gone into as much detail and as many technical arguments as I would have liked to have done. Will the Minister consider meeting to explore in more detail how the database will operate in practice? Although I believe the whole exercise is pointless, we must at least make some attempt to make it work properly.

Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to the adverse comments made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, if the Minister allows me, I will just respond initially to a few comments that have been brought up already. Some good points have been made that I want to identify the Liberal Democrats with.

The double entry issue is really troubling councils and others, and that really needs addressing and answering. I think we all need some assurance on readiness. Perhaps my question is: was there a decision about piloting this initially to get out all the teething problems?

On property agents, my deep concern that I take from what the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Howard, just said is one that the Minister will not be surprised to hear me express: property agents are not regulated and they have no professional codes of conduct and so on, just simple guidance. To me, we are giving them an incredibly powerful tool, and I think this is a strong argument for moving on the professionalisation of property agents, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Best, first reported on in one of his reports. When was it?

[Lord Best (CB)]

It was in 2019.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

Even the sector itself feels that it is overdue.

I supported the principle of a landlord database during the passage of the Renters’ Rights Bill. Looking back at some of my comments, I feel that I was a little messianic about it, because I genuinely believe that this could be a real tool to improve standards, inform tenants and bring rogue landlords to heel. Good enforcement needs good information, tenants deserve transparency, councils need effective tools and rogue landlords should not be able to hide from scrutiny.

So the principle is not the problem; interestingly, many of the briefings that we have received have stated that very clearly up front. That is important. For me, the question is: will this database actually do what it says on the tin and what it sets out to do? As a former elected mayor, I have seen plenty of databases. Creating one is usually the easy bit; keeping it accurate, useful and up to date is the hard bit and can be a real, onerous burden on an institution.

My first question is: are we collecting the right information—that is, the most helpful and informative? There is plenty in here about registration, certificates, licences and compliance documents—all of which is good stuff—but are we creating a genuinely useful tool or simply a very efficient filing cabinet? If I were a tenant looking for somewhere to live, I would want to know whether a landlord had received improvement notices, civil penalties or other enforcement action; frankly, that would tell me a lot more than whether somebody had uploaded a document on time. So my second question is: who is the database really for? Is it mainly a tool for councils and regulators, or is it supposed to help tenants make informed choices? If transparency is one of the objectives, what will the tenants actually be able to see?

My third concern is around compliance. There are worryingly varying estimates of the levels of awareness with regard to this. What assessment have the Government made of awareness in the sector of what has to be done? The landlord most likely to register is the landlord who is already trying to do the right thing. The landlord most likely to pay the fee is the landlord who is already trying to follow the rules. However, the one we all worry about is the one who ignores the system altogether. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, made a pertinent comment: there is a danger of us driving these people even further underground, because the problem is that they are already underground.

Regrettably, my real worry is that, due to the shortage of homes, the desperation of some tenants will always mean that these landlords find themselves suitable tenants. How will this scheme identify the landlord who simply chooses not to register? How will the information on the database be verified, rather than self-declared? As someone who has spent years in local government, like the Minister, I always get nervous when the answer to a problem seems to be another form. The reality is that we need more homes, more investment and, like it or not—as I discovered in my own council group—more larger, professionally managed housing providers that are investing in the sector.

One of the ways in which we are getting these things is through the growth of the build-to-rent sector. These developments often have one owner, one management structure and one set of compliance arrangements across an entire building. So I struggle with the logic here: if the same landlord is being asked, in essence, to submit the same information about the same building, over and over again, through hundreds of separate front doors, what problem is that solving? Does it make tenants safer? Does it give councils better intelligence? Does it improve enforcement? Or are we in danger of confusing more paperwork with better outcomes? Good regulation should be about outcomes, not processes, but this feels very process-driven at the moment. The aim should be better regulation, not simply more regulation.

As the Minister knows, I always approach these matters through the lens of delivery. Who will verify this information? Who will investigate non-compliance? Who will pursue the landlords who never register in the first place? What resources will local authorities receive to do so? How confident are the Government that councils are ready to go and have the capacity to do the job that we hope they will do? A database does not enforce itself, and a database on its own catches nobody.

My final questions are simple. How will the Government measure the success of this? How often will it be re-evaluated? Will it involve more records on the database, or will it lead—as I feel it should—to more rogue landlords being identified, more effective enforcement and, perhaps more importantly, better homes for tenants? Surely that is the test that will matter. Put simply, how will we know it has done the job that we all want it to do?