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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what purposes, if any, they consider will be served by a register of landlords which will not be served by the Landlord–Tenant redress scheme.

The Government is committed to requiring all private landlords to belong to a redress scheme. This will give tenants in the private rented sector a free, non-adversarial route to getting disputes with their landlord resolved outside of court where they have a legitimate complaint about their home. It will also support long-term improvements in the sector.

We have also committed to exploring the merits of introducing a national landlord register in England and there are a range of potential benefits that different models of registration could have, which are additional to those served by expanded redress provision.

These include, but are not limited to, providing local authorities with intelligence on private rented sector properties in their locality, making it easier for private landlords to understand their obligations and helping tenants decide whether to rent a property.

As part of exploring proposals for introducing a landlord register in England, we are considering how the register could interact with wider commitments for reforming the private rented sector.