The National Landlord Register: England's Private Rented Sector Database Explained

England is getting a national landlord register. It is called the Private Rented Sector Database, it was created by the Renters' Rights Act 2025, and landlords of assured and regulated tenancies in England will have to register on it, along with each property let under one; the government's guidance carves out supported exempt accommodation. The government has now put a date and a price on it. The "Register your rental property" service opens on 15 December 2026, starting in the West Midlands and reaching the rest of England region by region over the following year, and the fee is £65 per property per year. As things stand the service is not open, so nobody in England is registered yet and nobody can be.

So the short answer to "is there a national landlord register in England?" is not yet, but the opening date is set. It is law rather than a proposal, and once the relevant sections of the Act are commenced it has real teeth: a landlord who lets an unregistered property faces a council penalty of up to £7,000, rising to £40,000 or prosecution for repeat or serious cases, and cannot get a possession order on most grounds while unregistered. The first phase covers homes that are let, or become let, during the rollout; registering an empty home before marketing it, and putting registration numbers in adverts, belong to a later phase under future legislation.

Article updated: September 2026

What the Private Rented Sector Database is

The Private Rented Sector Database, usually shortened to the PRS Database, is a national register of private landlords and the homes they let in England. It sits in Part 2, Chapter 3 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025, sections 75 to 96. Under section 76 it is run by the Secretary of State or by an organisation the Secretary of State appoints, which the Act calls the "database operator".

The government's guide to the Act describes it as a "one stop shop" for landlords, a single "front door" to guidance on their obligations, and a way of telling landlords when the rules change. For tenants it is meant to increase the information available before they rent. For councils the guide is blunter: identifying poor-quality rented homes and who owns them is one of the biggest and most time-consuming barriers to enforcement, and the database is meant to remove that barrier.

Two features make it different from a membership list. Under section 84 the operator must give every registered landlord and every registered property a unique identifier, in effect a landlord registration number and a property number. And under section 82 any written advert for a rental home must carry both identifiers. The government's Housing Hub guidance puts that advert rule in a later phase: identifiers on adverts, and registering an empty home before it is marketed, arrive "under future legislation" as the public interface rolls out, not on the first day of registration. When that phase lands, a portal listing without a landlord number and a property number is itself a breach.

It is a register, not a licence. In most of England a landlord still needs no licence to let unless the property is an HMO that needs an HMO licence or sits in a selective licensing area, and the database sits alongside those schemes rather than replacing them. It is also not a trade body: the National Landlords Association, now merged into the NRLA, is a membership organisation landlords choose to join, while the database will be a legal duty on every landlord the Act covers.

When the landlord database starts: the dates we actually have

I have watched this idea go from a white paper to a bill that fell at an election to an Act that passed. The Act itself is done. The government's guide records that it "received Royal Assent on Monday 27 October 2025". The first wave of changes is also done: the November 2025 implementation roadmap set 1 May 2026 as the day section 21 "no fault" evictions ended and assured tenancies in England moved onto a periodic footing, and the Commencement No. 2 Regulations brought that into force on that date.

Key dates

The database is Phase 2. The roadmap's words are "We will commence roll out of the Database from late 2026", under a heading that calls the first stage a regional rollout. It adds that "Public access and data sharing will be enabled following the launch of landlord registration", so landlords register first and the public-facing search follows. The ombudsman and the Decent Homes Standard follow later, as the table shows.

Some of the groundwork is visible. The NRLA reported in August 2025 that the government was recruiting around ten landlords in each of Birmingham, Gateshead and Nottingham for a four-to-six-week test from 1 September 2025. In January 2026 it reported a further beta "in stages over the coming months, beginning in mid-February/March", with "any information entered during the beta phase" to be "deleted shortly afterwards", and said the database "will not be implemented until later in the year, when it will be rolled out on a regional basis".

The date arrived on 9 September 2026. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's announcement says the "Register your rental property" service "will launch on 15 December 2026, starting in the West Midlands and onto other areas over 12 months", that landlords in each region "will have a three-month period to sign up" once their area is called forward, and that "All landlords actively letting property will need to have registered by 14 November 2027". The government's Housing Hub guidance publishes the nine regional windows: the West Midlands from 15 December 2026 with a 14 March 2027 deadline, then the East of England, East Midlands, South East, Yorkshire and Humber, North West, North East and London a month apart, and the South West last, from 15 August 2027 with a 14 November 2027 deadline. The deadline follows the property's location, not the landlord's home address, and a landlord with properties in several regions can register them all from 15 December 2026. After a region's deadline, the guidance says, councils "will be able to initiate enforcement activity".

Two boundaries in that guidance matter. First, it heads the date column of its schedule "Date regulations commence", and section 145 of the Act leaves the database chapter to commencement regulations, so the dates above are the government's announced timetable and the statutory instrument that gives them legal effect is a separate document. Second, the guidance says the first phase covers properties "currently under let, or become let during the rollout period"; registering an empty property before marketing it, and identifiers on adverts, come "under future legislation" with the public interface, with further guidance promised ahead of that requirement.

Who has to register as a landlord in England

The guide's answer is wide: "All landlords of assured and regulated tenancies will be legally required to register themselves and their properties on the database". The roadmap repeats it as "mandatory for all PRS landlords". Assured tenancies are the normal modern private let; regulated tenancies are, in the government's words, "Most lettings by private landlords which began before 15 January 1989" under the Rent Acts (gov.uk guidance). The one carve-out the government has published so far is in its Housing Hub guidance: a landlord of supported exempt accommodation, as set out in section 12 of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, "won't need to register on the service". Otherwise it is mandatory in the plain sense: the Act as passed has no portfolio-size threshold and no exemption for accidental landlords or people letting one flat, though section 82(4) lets regulations carve out cases. If you are the landlord of an assured or regulated tenancy in England, the duty is meant to reach you.

Note the two halves. You register yourself, and you register each property. In the Act's language these are a "landlord entry" and a "dwelling entry", and under section 82(3) the landlord is under a duty to make sure both are active and kept up to date. A landlord with six houses will hold one landlord entry and six dwelling entries.

On agents, the Act as passed is clear about where the duty sits. Section 82(3) places it on "a person who is a residential landlord". Section 82(4) lets the Secretary of State make regulations that put the duty on "a person of a description specified in the regulations" instead, or switch it off in specified cases. The government's Housing Hub guidance does not move it: "Landlords are responsible for starting and ending the registration process", an agent or property manager can "provide certain information on your behalf", and "you as a landlord will remain responsible for providing all required information". Guidance for letting agents and property managers is promised before launch.

So a landlord who uses a full-management letting agent can have the agent upload some of the detail, but on the Act's wording and the government's guidance the legal duty to be registered, and the penalty for not being, is the landlord's. An agent's offer to handle database registration is a service; unless regulations later say otherwise, it does not move the liability. The agent is not outside the Act either: section 82(1) and (2) bind "a person" who markets or advertises, so once those marketing rules are commenced an agent or portal marketing an unregistered home is itself in breach, and under section 91 a council may penalise any person who breaches section 82(1), (2) or (3). The duty to be registered still sits with the landlord.

Joint owners are covered too. The roadmap says the landlord contact details captured will include "relevant information from all joint landlords", and section 90, once commenced, applies the possession restriction where "any of the joint landlords" is in breach.

If your tenants are already in, the timing is now written. The Housing Hub guidance says the first phase covers properties "currently under let, or become let during the rollout period", so a sitting tenancy is exactly what the rollout starts with, and the deadline is the one for the region where the property sits: three months from the date that region is called forward. Section 82(3) is drafted as a duty on a person who is a residential landlord, not only on new lets, and section 82(4)(b) lets regulations provide that a duty under the section "either does not apply at all or does not apply for a period specified in or determined in accordance with the regulations". The three-month window is the run-in the government has published; how it is written into the regulations is for the instrument itself.

For anyone buying a first rental this is the practical point. The duty is not something that arrives after you have built a portfolio. On the government's wording it reaches a property that is let, or becomes let, during the rollout, so a first tenancy that starts once your region is called forward brings the property into scope. The step before that, registering an empty home before it can be marketed under section 82(1), sits in the later phase the guidance describes as "under future legislation", and it tells landlords with unoccupied properties to "wait for further guidance" rather than register them yet. When that phase arrives, registration will sit on the same landlord responsibilities checklist as the gas safety certificate and the EICR, before the first viewing rather than after.

How to register as a landlord in England: what you will provide, and what will be public

The service is not open yet, but the government has published what it will ask for. Section 77 lets the Secretary of State set how an entry is made, by whom, what "information or documents" must be provided and what fee is paid. It also allows regulations to accept an entry before every requirement is met, provided the rest is completed within a period of no more than 28 days from the day the entry is made; that 28-day grace is a different thing from the three-month regional registration window. The Housing Hub guidance says the service needs a GOV.UK One Login, that "Offline registration routes will be available for landlords who need them", and that a dedicated contact centre will support registration and renewal once the service has rolled out.

Landlord and property details

The roadmap named three groups of information: the landlord's contact details "including capturing relevant information from all joint landlords", the property details, and "Gas, Electric and Energy Performance Certificates". The Housing Hub guidance now carries the full field list, and it adds a rent group the roadmap did not mention:

• The landlord: name, date of birth, residential address, telephone number and email for an individual; organisation details, legal entity type and a nominated contact for a company, charity or trust; and, where someone is making the entry in another capacity such as an attorney, executor or receiver, a copy of their evidence of authority.
• The property: address, ownership type, dwelling type, number of bedrooms, whether it is currently under let, number of occupants and households, whether it is let furnished, partly furnished or unfurnished, whether it needs an HMO, additional or selective licence and the licence numbers, and the name and email of any freeholder, superior landlord or property manager.
• The rent: the rent charged, how often it is paid, and whether it includes utilities and which ones.
• Safety information: where the property has a gas supply, a copy of the gas safety record "if one exists" and its issue date; a copy of the EICR "if one exists", or the appropriate Electrical Installation Certificate, and its expiry date; whether an EPC had to be given to the current tenant and, if so, a copy of the most recent one "if one exists", plus details of any registered MEES exemption where the rating is below the minimum standard. That "if one exists" wording describes what the service will accept; it says nothing about whether the landlord should hold the document, and registration does not alter any separate duty to have one.

The enforcement record

The enforcement record is a separate layer. Once section 83 is commenced, a council must make an entry when it has obtained a banning order against someone, secured a conviction for a banning order offence, or imposed a financial penalty for one. It may also record convictions and penalties that came from other bodies' action.

What will be public

How much of this the public will see is not settled. The guide says: "We are still determining the exact information which will be available to the public and this will be set out in regulations. We are planning for this to include information related to property standards." It adds: "Tenants will be able to access necessary information in relation to their landlord and details of the property, but we do not envisage that all data will be publicly accessible." The later Housing Hub guidance says the same: tenants will be able to use the service "in future", and "We'll publish a list of information that the public will be able to access at a later stage".

Section 86 lets the Secretary of State decide what the operator publishes from landlord, dwelling and enforcement entries. For council-made enforcement entries, regulations can require a wait of at least 21 days before publication, and the person must be told so they can point out errors first. Councils, local weights and measures authorities, the lead enforcement authority, mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority get access regardless. On HMRC: the Act names no HMRC feed, and section 87 bars the operator from disclosing restricted information except under section 86 or where regulations authorise it.

For what a public landlord search looks like in practice, the three live UK registers differ.

What you cannot do if you are not registered

Four consequences are written into the Act, and each only bites once the relevant part of the Act is commenced. The government's announced timetable so far covers registering let properties; its Housing Hub guidance expressly places the marketing and advert rules in a later phase.

You cannot market or let the property

Section 82(1) says a person must not market a dwelling for letting unless there is an active landlord entry for the person who will be the landlord and an active dwelling entry for the property. Section 82(2) requires written adverts to carry both unique identifiers. Section 82(5) adds that a breach does not make the tenancy itself void, so a tenant of an unregistered landlord still has a valid tenancy. On the guidance's timetable these two rules are the later phase: registering an empty home before marketing it, and identifiers on adverts, arrive "under future legislation" as the public interface rolls out.

You cannot get most possession orders

Section 90 inserts a rule into the Housing Act 1988 that a court "may not make an order for possession of a dwelling-house while the landlord (or, in the case of joint landlords, any of the joint landlords) is in breach of section 82(3)(a)", unless the ground is Ground 7A or Ground 14. The government's guide puts it plainly: landlords in breach of the duty to register "will not be able to get a possession order except if the ground under which possession is sought is ground 7A or ground 14 (tenant anti-social behaviour)".

Civil penalties, and when it becomes an offence

Under section 91 a council that is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that someone has breached section 82 can impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000. Under section 92 it becomes an offence to knowingly or recklessly give the operator information that is false or misleading in a material respect, to carry on breaching more than 28 days after a penalty, or to breach again within five years of a penalty or conviction. For a section 92 offence the council's civil penalty rises to up to £40,000, or the case can go to court, where the sentence on summary conviction is a fine. Where the landlord is a company, section 92(8) extends the offence to an officer of the company where it was committed with their "consent or connivance" or is "attributable to any neglect" on their part.

The guide summarises it as "a civil penalty of up to £7,000" for letting or advertising unregistered, and "up to £40,000 or could face criminal prosecution" for repeat breaches or serious offences such as fraudulent information.

Section 79 matters for all of this because it lets regulations say when an active entry becomes inactive "if requirements specified in the regulations are not met", and states that those requirements "include requirements for the payment of fees". So an entry can lapse for non-payment, and the position between tenancies is for the regulations, though section 82(1) already means both entries must be active before a home is marketed again. The guidance says registration is renewed each year.

A tenant can seek a rent repayment order

Section 98 adds two database offences to the list that can ground a rent repayment order under the Housing and Planning Act 2016: providing false or misleading information under section 92(1), and a continuing breach under section 92(2) "but only if the penalty imposed relates to a breach of a requirement imposed by section 82(3)". So this one bites after a penalty has been imposed and ignored, or after false information, not on day one of being unregistered. It is also not yet in force: the Commencement No. 2 Regulations brought section 98 in on 1 May 2026 except for the database and ombudsman rows, which wait for a later order.

The biggest practical cost of ignoring the database, once those sections are commenced, is being unable to get a tenant out on rent arrears or any other ground outside 7A and 14 until the entry is put right, and, in the later phase, being unable to advertise at all.

What landlord registration will cost

The figure is now set. The Housing Hub guidance says: "There's an annual £65 registration fee per property, and you'll need to renew your registration each year." Its own questions add that "The fee is for one property. You'll need to pay the fee each time you register a different property", and that "During the service rollout, the fee will be adjusted (pro-rated), so that those signing up first don't have to pay more"; the guidance does not publish how that adjustment is calculated. The guide's earlier promise that the fee would be "proportionate and good value" and the roadmap's "annual fee which will be confirmed closer to launch" have been overtaken by that number. The guidance says the fee was set to balance "fairness and sustainability for landlords" against the cost of operating the service and "tackling non-compliance", and that fee income will also fund council staff to act on non-compliance.

The Act does say what the fee is allowed to pay for. Section 81 lets regulations set the fee, or let the operator set it to cover the "relevant costs": building and running the database, enforcing its rules, and enforcing "any other requirements imposed by or under this Act or otherwise in relation to the private rented sector". It is headed "Fees for landlord and dwelling entries" and speaks of "the amount or amounts of the fee", so the Act allows a fee on either or both entries; the published fee is per property, and the guidance names no separate charge for the landlord entry. It also allows a higher fee to reactivate an entry that has lapsed than to keep one active. The fee is designed to recover the cost of the system and some enforcement, and letting your entry lapse may cost more than renewing on time.

For scale, the three registers that already charge are set out in the comparison tables below. England's £65 is per property, every year. Scotland's is a principal fee per council plus £20 per property every three years, and Wales and Northern Ireland charge a single registration fee that lasts five and three years respectively, so the shapes differ and the annual cost in England scales with the number of properties you hold.

For a landlord running the numbers on a purchase, £65 a year per property belongs next to the gas check and the EICR in the running-cost column rather than being a one-off. Our guide to whether buy-to-let is worth it looks at how running costs and new rules like this one eat into the rent.

How England compares with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

There is no single UK landlord register. England is the last of the four UK nations to get one. Scotland's runs under Part 8 of the Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004, Northern Ireland's under its Landlord Registration Scheme, and Wales's under Rent Smart Wales.

All three are live, all three charge, and all three have a public search. The figures below come from each register's own published fee and scheme pages, linked under the table.

Who registers, what it costs, how long it lasts

Sources: the Housing Hub guidance, roadmap and guide for England; the Scottish register's fees page; Rent Smart Wales; and nidirect.

Penalties and public search

The second half of the comparison is what happens when you do not register, and what anyone can look up.

Sources: the government's guide, section 91 and Housing Hub guidance for England; the Scottish register's about page and search page; the Rent Smart Wales registration page and its public register; and nidirect.

Two things stand out. England's £7,000 headline civil penalty, once commenced, sits between Wales's £150 fixed penalty notice and Scotland's criminal ceiling of £50,000, and both England and Wales tie the register to possession: Wales restricts a landlord's ability to secure possession, England bars possession orders outside Grounds 7A and 14.

Wales goes a step further than a register: a landlord who manages their own Welsh property needs a licence from Rent Smart Wales on top of registration, which has no English equivalent in the database. Our separate Rent Smart Wales guide covers that side.

Landlord registration in Scotland

Scotland's system is landlord registration with the local council under Part 8 of the Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004, not licensing, and it is not the same thing as the selective licensing schemes English councils run ward by ward. Registration is renewed every three years, the principal fee is £85 per council plus £20 per property, and letting unregistered is a criminal offence with a penalty on conviction of up to £50,000 and a letting ban of up to five years. The public search runs on a registration number or the property postcode.

Landlord registration in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland's Landlord Registration Scheme covers all landlords who let under a private tenancy there. Registration costs £70 online or £80 on paper and the certificate lasts three years. Anyone can search the register for a landlord by name or for a property; the nidirect scheme page does not state a penalty figure for not registering.

How to check if a landlord is registered today

A lot of people reach this page looking for a landlord registry to search. The answer depends on where the property is.

In England there is nothing national to search yet: registration opens on 15 December 2026 and the public search comes after it. The roadmap's sequence is landlord registration first, then "Public access and data sharing will be enabled following the launch of landlord registration", and the Housing Hub guidance says tenants will be able to use the service "in future", with the list of public information to be published "at a later stage". Until then, the public registration records available in England are councils' HMO and selective-licensing licence registers.

Every council must keep a register of the HMO and selective licences it has granted, and under section 232 of the Housing Act 2004 must make that register available for public inspection at its head office at all reasonable times. That tells you whether a licensable property is licensed and to whom. It does not tell you anything about the landlord of an ordinary single let.

In Scotland, the Scottish Landlord Register search takes a landlord registration number or the property postcode. In Wales, the Rent Smart Wales public register searches by address, landlord, agent or reference. In Northern Ireland, the nidirect scheme page carries a search for a landlord by name and a search for a property.

For an English landlord the flip side matters more than the search. In the later phase the guidance describes, every written advert will carry your landlord number and the property number under section 82(2), and the government is "planning for" property-standards information to be public. On the government's sequence, public access follows landlord registration, and the regulations will set what is published.

Where the database sits in the Renters' Rights Act

The database is one part of a much bigger Act, which the roadmap puts in three phases:

• Phase 1, from 1 May 2026 (roadmap): section 21 evictions abolished and assured periodic tenancies introduced in the private rented sector. Our guide to the assured shorthold tenancy explains what that change did to the tenancy itself.
• Phase 2, from 15 December 2026 (announcement): the PRS Database, rolling out region by region, then the PRS Landlord Ombudsman, with mandatory membership expected in 2028. The roadmap says the government is exploring how to share information between the database and the ombudsman "to minimise landlord sign-up burden".
• Phase 3: a Decent Homes Standard for the private rented sector. The roadmap's "either 2035 or 2037" has since been settled: the government's January 2026 policy statement says "we are setting an implementation date of 2035" for the new standard in both the social and private rented sectors, and lists among its next steps bringing forward "the legislation and regulation to bring the new DHS into force", so the requirement is a policy timetable rather than law already commenced.

What to do now if you let property, or are about to

Nothing can be registered yet, and there is nothing to pay yet, but the date, the fee and the field list are published. What a landlord can do is make registration easier to complete once the service opens on 15 December 2026. These are the steps I would line up, built from what the government's Housing Hub guidance and implementation roadmap say it will ask for.

• The guidance names the things worth having in one place for each property: the landlord's contact details (and every joint landlord's), the property details it lists, the rent and what it includes, and the current gas safety record, electrical installation condition report and Energy Performance Certificate where each applies. A GOV.UK One Login is needed to use the service.
• Licensing continues alongside the database: a property in a selective licensing area or needing an HMO licence keeps that, the guidance asks for the licence numbers in the property entry, and the council that issues the licence is the council that will enforce the database.
• With an agent, the useful thing to have in writing is who will upload what; the guidance says the landlord starts and ends the registration and "will remain responsible for providing all required information", with agent guidance promised before launch.
• The fee is £65 per property per year, pro-rated during the rollout and renewed annually: an annual running-cost line.
• The deadline follows the property's region, not your home address: three months from the date the region is called forward, the West Midlands first from 15 December 2026 and the South West last with a 14 November 2027 deadline. Empty properties are not in the first phase; the guidance says to wait for further guidance before registering one.

If you are at the other end, looking at an investment property purchase rather than managing one, the change is that registration becomes part of the buying checklist. A property bought as a rental will need its dwelling entry once it is let, and, in the later phase the guidance describes, before it can be marketed to tenants; you will need your landlord entry alongside it. That is true whether you are browsing buy to let property for sale on the open market or taking on below market value properties that need work first. Where a project commissions the gas, electrical and EPC inspections, those certificates are the same ones the database is expected to ask for.

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