Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask His Majesty's Government, in light of the new database of all private rented housing, what consideration they have given to enabling the database as a tool for applying for licenses from local authorities without having to re-enter the same data.

As we approach implementation of the Register your rental property service, we will continue to take feedback from users and make continuous improvements to the service post launch, as is normal practice when developing digital services.

We know landlords with larger portfolios want enhanced functionality to manage their properties on the service. To fulfil this need, we are allowing a landlord or letting agent organisation to give appropriate members of staff access to manage the rental properties they are responsible for.

Following launch we will look at integration with systems used by organisational landlords, and will consider the viability of bulk payments for this group. We believe this approach would add greater value than manual bulk uploads, which we have concluded would not offer significant time savings for landlords.

We recognise that, for many landlords, agents are their primary source of advice and support. While responsibility for making and updating entries lies with landlords, agents will be well placed to help landlords understand registration requirements, maintain accurate property information, and ensure that landlords continue to meet their legal obligations.

From launch, we will allow for letting and property agents to support landlords by inputting some of the information required for the registration of properties. Landlords must initiate registration, but will be able to delegate to their letting or property agent to supply tenancy and health and safety information on their behalf if the agent agrees.

We are committed to ensuring the service is secure and to protecting the privacy of our users. We are using modern security tools to continuously protect the service, monitor it for vulnerabilities or suspicious activity, and help the team identify and respond to security issues. We have been assessing our services against the National Cyber Security Centre Cyber Assessment Framework, conducting penetration testing and working with MHCLG's Data Protection Officer to produce a Data Protection Impact Assessment, Data Sharing Agreements with local councils, and privacy statements for landlords, local councils and letting agent users.

Future legislation will set out which landlord and property records will be made available to the public and shared with any further organisations when the public-facing service is launched at a later date.

The digitisation of gas and electrical safety certificates is beyond the scope of the Register your rental property service. However, we will build the service in such a way that it is able to draw information from digitised datasets going forwards.

We recognise that the registration fee of £65 has been set at a higher level than the figures included in the full Impact Assessment published with the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. We intend to perform a full Impact Assessment ahead of stage two of implementation where we can consider the impacts and benefits which come from the public interface.

The government has set the fee at a level that balances fairness and sustainability for landlords with the relevant costs of operating the service and tackling non-compliance in the private rented sector. Fee income will support enforcement activity, helping councils build the staff and skills needed to identify and tackle non-compliance, exercise their legal powers, and compliance and drive landlords who persistently break the law out of the sector

We are clear in guidance that local councils should be mindful of any cost impacts to landlords in setting fees for selective licensing schemes, particularly those who are already fully compliant with their obligations. Selective licensing is a separate regime to the service, and licence fees set by local councils are designed to ensure that the costs of operating licensing schemes are covered. As such, there is no overlap between these fees and registration fees for the service. However, we are continuing to review the use of selective licensing as we develop the Register your rental property service to prevent duplication.