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14/7/25 8:13 pm
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Rent Smart Wales has insisted it doesn’t let non-compliant landlords “get away with it”.
The scheme is run by the Welsh Government to help the PRS comply with rental rules that mean all private landlords must be registered, while self-managing landlords and agents need a licence.
It explains that Rent Smart Wales officers regularly attend landlord forum meetings across the country where landlords often say they feel aggrieved that other landlords are getting away with it. “Not so!” it asserts. “Rent Smart Wales has several powers to secure compliance and a responsibility to enforce where needed to improve the standards and management of the sector.”
The scheme says its enforcement team regularly takes action against landlords and agents who don’t comply with the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. It has handed out 2,739 fixed penalty notices since 2017, most of them in the south of the country (1,280), followed by the west (419), north west (241), north east (222), and mid-Wales (155). There have also been 419 notices handed out outside Wales.
Most of the notices were for unlicensed landlords (1,617), followed by unregistered landlords (1,008), and failure for an agent to be licensed (84). Numbers have risen from 179 in 2021 to 547 so far this year.
It reports that 14% of notices have resulted in prosecution (365), with £331,519 collected in fines, and eight rent repayment orders issued. In 2021, there were 38 prosecutions, while so far this year there have been 67.
Rent Smart Wales explains that it undertakes ‘seek and find’ projects to identify non-compliant landlords and agents, while it also gets tip-offs from third parties including tenants, advocacy agencies and neighbours.
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