.jpg)
-
17/12/25 3:30 pm
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
One area of the Renters’ Rights Act that has yet to be clarified by the Government is what ‘required information’ the online Private Rented Sector Database for England will have to contain - and how invasive that will be in the name of 'transparency'.
The database is to be rolled out from late 2026 onwards after which landlords will have to pay to register themselves and their property or properties with the database before being able to legally rent a property out. Fines for first offences will be up to £7,000 and for repeat offenders up to £40,000.
Also, landlords will not be able to evict a tenant if the property is not registered with the database, and every advert marketing a property to rent will have to show the database’s ‘unique number’ for the property.
This will enable tenants to see much more about the prospective property and its landlord before committing to a viewing or offer. The Government says it will publish the required information to be submitted to the database via new ‘regulations’ before the database goes live but has given some idea of what they may contain.
For example, it wants to balance landlord privacy with the need to help local authorities and tenants understand whether a landlord and their property meets minimum ‘property standards’ and is compliant.
The database will also replace the current Rogue Landlords Database, which except in London is only visible to local authorities and not the public. This is set to change – the Government says it wants “certain details relating to offences viewable to tenants and prospective tenants”.
At the very minimum, obvious information such as a rented property’s address, details of its landlord/owner and the required safety certificates including gas and electricity and proof of deposit protection are likely to be the ‘bare minimum, but will it include other data that might be useful for enforcement purposes?
There is a political issue here – by publishing information of this nature – examples of which I include below – Ministers will be open to accusations of ‘snooping’ on landlords. So how far might they go?
One area of interest is a property’s marketing history – i.e. when did the landlord or their letting agent advertise it to rent and for how much, and when did the subsequent tenancy begin?
This would be useful to both local authority enforcement officers fighting unlawful attempts by landlords to raise rents during a tenancy and also tenants seeking Rent Repayment Orders.
Readers may not realise, but landlords will soon be stopped from raising rents more than once during a calendar year and then only to the ‘market rate’ with rent review clauses in contracts outlawed.
To have details of the original rent charged at the beginning of a tenancy, and details of any rent rises too submitted to the database, would be useful when tribunals need to determine whether a rent rise is unfair or not – so it would be surprising if this was left off the list of information to be included within the database.
Also, proof of marketing activity would be a key piece of information when dealing with landlords who break the new rules on evictions within the Renters’ Rights Act.
These will soon stop landlords from turfing out tenants and then re-listing them to new ones for a higher rent.
Landlords who say they are evicting a tenant to sell the property, move back in themselves or house a relative will be prevented from advertising for rent or letting a property for 12 months after the original tenants leave.
If they are caught flouting this, then tenants will be able to claim two years’ rent via a Rent Repayment Order. So details of when the property was advertised last would be very useful to a council seeking a prosecution or fine.
One unintended consequence of all this is that a small industry of ‘ambulance chasing’ solicitors will spring up to help tenants make claims – particularly for Rent Repayment Orders, which will soon run into tens of thousands of pounds in many cases and therefore be lucrative areas for the paralegal industry to mine, and the Private Sector Landlord Database will be a useful tool for them.
Let’s see what the New Year brings.
Tags:
.avif)
Comments