Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the register of landlords in Scotland in reducing bad practice.

The Coalition Government supports a bigger and better private rented sector and is keen to minimise the burden of regulation on the vast majority of good landlords. Excessive red tape would just force up rents and reduce choice and supply for tenants.

We believe that imposing a national register of landlords would be disproportionate and unfairly penalise good landlords who are fully compliant with their obligations. It would cost an estimated £40 million a year – costs which ultimately would be passed on to tenants in higher rents.

As an alternative to such regulation, we support the use of voluntary accreditation by local authorities coupled with strong enforcement action to crack down on the small minority of rogue landlords who rent out overcrowded and dilapidated property. Voluntary accreditation helps drive up standards and increase levels of professionalism amongst landlords.

We have not formally assessed Scotland's scheme, but I note that an answer to a Parliamentary Question in the Scottish Parliament in January 2013 noted that since the scheme was introduced in 2006, it had cost landlords £11 million in fees and a further £5 million in costs to taxpayers, but only 40 landlords had been refused in total over that period out of almost 200,000 landlord registrations. This suggests that such state regulation had not been effective at tackling rogue landlords despite significant costs imposed on the whole rented sector.