Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee
Wednesday 28th October 2026
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16:30
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Regulations 2026 in our manifesto, Mr. Wishart. We promise to overhaul the regulation. Mr. Wishart, it's a pleasure to serve with you in the chair. I beg to move that the committee has considered the private rented sector data of an insecure and unjust private rented sector. Our Transformative Renter's Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on the 27th of October last year, delivered on that commitment. On the 13th of November, we published an implementation roadmap setting out our intention to switch on the provisions of the act in three distinct phases. The first phase, which entailed the introduction of the new tenancy regime, was implemented on the 1st of May this year.
We are now progressing with the second phase of our reforms. This entails establishing a landlord ombudsman for the PRS to improve dispute resolution, settling issues between tenants and landlords without costly court proceedings, and introducing our innovative database of PRS properties to bring together key information for landlords, tenants and councils. These regulations concern the latter. They set out the registration framework for the database and are essential to enabling its rollout, which will commence regionally from the 15th of December. The database will record information about private landlords and private properties in England. It will help landlords understand their obligations, give tenants better information before entering into a tenancy, and support local authorities with enforcement.
The service will be known publicly as register your rental property service, but I'll refer to it as the database for the purposes of this debate. The regulations before us determine how registering for the database will work in practice. They cover who can make entries, what information must be provided, and how the database can be kept accurate. Over time and up to date. Landlords will be required to make a landlord entry, which will include their name and contact information. Entries for organisational landlords will include information about the organisation and its management. Joint landlords will share the dwelling entry for the property, but each will need their own landlord entry.
Landlords will be required to make a dwelling entry for each property, which contains information including its address, ownership, property type, rent level and relevant management details. Once occupied, this must include tenancy and health and safety information, including uploaded certificates and information relating to gas, electrical and energy performance information. Landlords will be legally responsible for registration, payment renewal and compliance under regulations. They may, however, delegate the supply of certain information to an agent or property manager to reduce administrative burden. The regulations also allow entries to be made, updated or renewed by certain third parties in discrete circumstances.
For example, where a landlord lacks capacity or where a possession restriction is in place. When a mortgage provider requires court order, possession of an unregistered property, entries will need to be kept up to date for an entry to be deemed active. Recorded information will be treated as out of date, where details no longer reflect the landlord, property, tenancy or relevant compliance position, they must generally be updated within 28 days. Regulations give the database operator the ability to correct errors and remove entries that do not meet the requirements for inclusion. We will issue guidance on operational detail, including on verification of entries by local authorities.
Regulations require landlords to pay a fee to make or renew a dwelling entry. The instrument does not set the fee but does delegate this to the database operator. The operator is required to set the fee by reference to the relevant costs, as specified in the Act. We separately announced the fee as £65 per property per year, prorated during initial rollout to ensure costs remain fair and those registering first aren't paying more. Mr. Wishart This is the first of two statutory instruments needed to implement the database. Following parliamentary approval of this first instrument, rollout of the database will commence.
As I've made clear, on the 15th of December this year, each region will be rolled out in one month intervals. When a region's registration window goes live, landlords will have three months to register properties in the region. We've issued guidance showing the order and timings for this. All relevant entries are required to be made by the end of the 14th of November 2027. A second statutory instrument will cover the public facing side of the database. The addition of specified breaches and offences committed by landlords and further data sharing. We will commence this as soon as possible following completion of the initial rollout.
This will concern what information is made visible to the public and why the data sharing arrangements. Those matters are therefore not in the scope of this regulation. To conclude, Mr. Wishart, these regulations put in place the operational requirements needed to begin the rollout of the database. They're a critical step toward a more transparent and enforceable system, supporting compliance while giving tenants better information about the homes they rent. And I commend these regulations to the committee today. Thank you.
Question is that.
We are now progressing with the second phase of our reforms. This entails establishing a landlord ombudsman for the PRS to improve dispute resolution, settling issues between tenants and landlords without costly court proceedings, and introducing our innovative database of PRS properties to bring together key information for landlords, tenants and councils. These regulations concern the latter. They set out the registration framework for the database and are essential to enabling its rollout, which will commence regionally from the 15th of December. The database will record information about private landlords and private properties in England. It will help landlords understand their obligations, give tenants better information before entering into a tenancy, and support local authorities with enforcement.
The service will be known publicly as register your rental property service, but I'll refer to it as the database for the purposes of this debate. The regulations before us determine how registering for the database will work in practice. They cover who can make entries, what information must be provided, and how the database can be kept accurate. Over time and up to date. Landlords will be required to make a landlord entry, which will include their name and contact information. Entries for organisational landlords will include information about the organisation and its management. Joint landlords will share the dwelling entry for the property, but each will need their own landlord entry.
Landlords will be required to make a dwelling entry for each property, which contains information including its address, ownership, property type, rent level and relevant management details. Once occupied, this must include tenancy and health and safety information, including uploaded certificates and information relating to gas, electrical and energy performance information. Landlords will be legally responsible for registration, payment renewal and compliance under regulations. They may, however, delegate the supply of certain information to an agent or property manager to reduce administrative burden. The regulations also allow entries to be made, updated or renewed by certain third parties in discrete circumstances.
For example, where a landlord lacks capacity or where a possession restriction is in place. When a mortgage provider requires court order, possession of an unregistered property, entries will need to be kept up to date for an entry to be deemed active. Recorded information will be treated as out of date, where details no longer reflect the landlord, property, tenancy or relevant compliance position, they must generally be updated within 28 days. Regulations give the database operator the ability to correct errors and remove entries that do not meet the requirements for inclusion. We will issue guidance on operational detail, including on verification of entries by local authorities.
Regulations require landlords to pay a fee to make or renew a dwelling entry. The instrument does not set the fee but does delegate this to the database operator. The operator is required to set the fee by reference to the relevant costs, as specified in the Act. We separately announced the fee as £65 per property per year, prorated during initial rollout to ensure costs remain fair and those registering first aren't paying more. Mr. Wishart This is the first of two statutory instruments needed to implement the database. Following parliamentary approval of this first instrument, rollout of the database will commence.
As I've made clear, on the 15th of December this year, each region will be rolled out in one month intervals. When a region's registration window goes live, landlords will have three months to register properties in the region. We've issued guidance showing the order and timings for this. All relevant entries are required to be made by the end of the 14th of November 2027. A second statutory instrument will cover the public facing side of the database. The addition of specified breaches and offences committed by landlords and further data sharing. We will commence this as soon as possible following completion of the initial rollout.
This will concern what information is made visible to the public and why the data sharing arrangements. Those matters are therefore not in the scope of this regulation. To conclude, Mr. Wishart, these regulations put in place the operational requirements needed to begin the rollout of the database. They're a critical step toward a more transparent and enforceable system, supporting compliance while giving tenants better information about the homes they rent. And I commend these regulations to the committee today. Thank you.
Question is that.
16:34
16:30
Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Wishart. It's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this case. I think it's my first time. I welcome the opportunity to sit opposite the minister again and appreciate the remarks he has made in this debate. I also welcome this opportunity on behalf of His Majesty's Opposition to address the set of regulations. Mr. Wishart, a fair, honest and accountable private rented sector is important for landlords, agents and tenants alike. I think there is no dispute in that. Indeed, any system concerning people's homes and property must be transparent. And from what I've heard, the providers in the private rental sector are broadly united in agreement on that point, the National Residential Landlords Association has said, and I quote, if designed well, the database should make it easy for landlords to demonstrate compliance with their obligations, whilst empowering tenants to distinguish between responsible majority and the rogue and criminal minority of landlords.
The large agents, large Agents representative Group said, and I quote, with the correct design, it would make compliance easier to demonstrate. Landlords and their agents give tenants greater confidence about the homes that they rent, and provide local authorities with better information to target enforcement against those who fail to meet the required standards. However, with these regulations before us, the A have described them as a costly mess. The idea of a national register is in itself not a disagreeable one, but the proposed implementation and structure of this database is alien to any common sense approach. First and most strikingly, the government have designed the database with barely a fifth of the providers in mind.
Landlords with a single property are responsible for just 21% of tenancies in England compared , according to the 2024 English Private Landlords Survey. The other roughly 4/5 of tenancies are managed by landlords with more than one property, including some with thousands. Indeed, around 1 in 5 landlords hold nearly half of all tenancies. Mr. Wishart It is 2026. There is very advanced technology available, yet the government's proposals envisage manual uploading of each individual property. These regulations, as they stand here and now, make no provision for bulk upload, forcing landlords into uploading properties . One by one. Mr.
Wishart Noah processed more animals onto the ark at a time than that each property requires circa 70 data points. That's an awful lot of admin and a huge time implication, but much of the information required is already submitted to councils through the existing licensing schemes. The Large Agents representative group, representing some of the largest portfolios in the country through clients such as Chestertons, Hamptons, Knight Frank and Foxtons, estimate that if it takes ten minutes to register an individual property, if the government estimates apparently show that means over 1600 staff hours for a 10,000 property portfolio and about 3300 hours for the 20 minutes it actually expects it to take.
But on that point, larger providers disagree with the government's estimate of the time to upload data, and the associated costs of uploading per property could be even longer, assuming it takes 30 minutes per property, and that there are seven productive working hours a day, that amounts to 214 working days for a 3000 home property portfolio and 714 days for a 10,000 property portfolio. And this is a long way from being the only problem with the proposed database. The regulations stipulate that landlords must start and end the registration themselves, and agents can only supply certain information.
This directly contradicts the government's own impact assessment, which assumed agents would register on the landlord's behalf. Then there is the lack of an audit trail because of the system favoured by the government. Landlords have no ability to verify and validate data on a portfolio basis. They have no access controls nor audit trail for data uploads, changes or deletions. The consequence of this is obvious a heightened risk of exposure to administrative errors. Consequent fines, which can range from £7000 to £40,000, and a host of compliance and audit risks. Then we come to the subject of cost the Renters Rights Act 2025 included in its impact assessment an estimated data registration fee of £28.85 per property every three years.
Now, the government have confirmed a fee of £65 per property every single year. While the draft regulations require entries to be renewed every 12 months for the 80% of landlords in the market that care for more than one property, this represents a significant and unplanned recurring cost, and no one in the sector knows where the figure of £65 came from, nor how it can be justified. And perhaps the minister, in his closing remarks, can provide a clear explanation of how that £65 has been calculated. While the providers in the private rented sector are in broad agreement with the concept of a database, they are also united in viewing the approach of this government as a total disaster, and none of the concerns I've outlined today should come as news to the government, because they've all been raised directly with government officials by industry representatives.
Many of those I've spoken to thought the government had heard their concerns and were making adjustments, only to discover later that they'd been ignored entirely. How does the government expect to earn or maintain the trust of the whole sector, when they ignore the sector's concerns and blindside them with extra financial and labour costs? The large agents representative group have summed up the government's proposals by stating, and again, I quote, instead of making best use of data already held across government and other established systems, the proposed approach required landlords and agents to manually and repeatedly input and maintain information.
In most cases are already available elsewhere, creating unnecessary duplication, administrative burden and risk of inaccuracy for all stakeholders. The decisions being made now about its underlying architecture risk embedding unnecessary bureaucracy and practical problems . From the outset. This is concerning when significant fees are being imposed and non-compliance carries substantial and lasting
The large agents, large Agents representative Group said, and I quote, with the correct design, it would make compliance easier to demonstrate. Landlords and their agents give tenants greater confidence about the homes that they rent, and provide local authorities with better information to target enforcement against those who fail to meet the required standards. However, with these regulations before us, the A have described them as a costly mess. The idea of a national register is in itself not a disagreeable one, but the proposed implementation and structure of this database is alien to any common sense approach. First and most strikingly, the government have designed the database with barely a fifth of the providers in mind.
Landlords with a single property are responsible for just 21% of tenancies in England compared , according to the 2024 English Private Landlords Survey. The other roughly 4/5 of tenancies are managed by landlords with more than one property, including some with thousands. Indeed, around 1 in 5 landlords hold nearly half of all tenancies. Mr. Wishart It is 2026. There is very advanced technology available, yet the government's proposals envisage manual uploading of each individual property. These regulations, as they stand here and now, make no provision for bulk upload, forcing landlords into uploading properties . One by one. Mr.
Wishart Noah processed more animals onto the ark at a time than that each property requires circa 70 data points. That's an awful lot of admin and a huge time implication, but much of the information required is already submitted to councils through the existing licensing schemes. The Large Agents representative group, representing some of the largest portfolios in the country through clients such as Chestertons, Hamptons, Knight Frank and Foxtons, estimate that if it takes ten minutes to register an individual property, if the government estimates apparently show that means over 1600 staff hours for a 10,000 property portfolio and about 3300 hours for the 20 minutes it actually expects it to take.
But on that point, larger providers disagree with the government's estimate of the time to upload data, and the associated costs of uploading per property could be even longer, assuming it takes 30 minutes per property, and that there are seven productive working hours a day, that amounts to 214 working days for a 3000 home property portfolio and 714 days for a 10,000 property portfolio. And this is a long way from being the only problem with the proposed database. The regulations stipulate that landlords must start and end the registration themselves, and agents can only supply certain information.
This directly contradicts the government's own impact assessment, which assumed agents would register on the landlord's behalf. Then there is the lack of an audit trail because of the system favoured by the government. Landlords have no ability to verify and validate data on a portfolio basis. They have no access controls nor audit trail for data uploads, changes or deletions. The consequence of this is obvious a heightened risk of exposure to administrative errors. Consequent fines, which can range from £7000 to £40,000, and a host of compliance and audit risks. Then we come to the subject of cost the Renters Rights Act 2025 included in its impact assessment an estimated data registration fee of £28.85 per property every three years.
Now, the government have confirmed a fee of £65 per property every single year. While the draft regulations require entries to be renewed every 12 months for the 80% of landlords in the market that care for more than one property, this represents a significant and unplanned recurring cost, and no one in the sector knows where the figure of £65 came from, nor how it can be justified. And perhaps the minister, in his closing remarks, can provide a clear explanation of how that £65 has been calculated. While the providers in the private rented sector are in broad agreement with the concept of a database, they are also united in viewing the approach of this government as a total disaster, and none of the concerns I've outlined today should come as news to the government, because they've all been raised directly with government officials by industry representatives.
Many of those I've spoken to thought the government had heard their concerns and were making adjustments, only to discover later that they'd been ignored entirely. How does the government expect to earn or maintain the trust of the whole sector, when they ignore the sector's concerns and blindside them with extra financial and labour costs? The large agents representative group have summed up the government's proposals by stating, and again, I quote, instead of making best use of data already held across government and other established systems, the proposed approach required landlords and agents to manually and repeatedly input and maintain information.
In most cases are already available elsewhere, creating unnecessary duplication, administrative burden and risk of inaccuracy for all stakeholders. The decisions being made now about its underlying architecture risk embedding unnecessary bureaucracy and practical problems . From the outset. This is concerning when significant fees are being imposed and non-compliance carries substantial and lasting