Government portal will give details on criminal landlords

The government has revealed that its property portal will be publicly available for everyone to help drive criminal landlords and agents from the private rental sector.

The response is part of the consultation to reforming its rogue landlord database with news that the recently announced property portal will ensure that local councils, landlords and tenants will be able to access the information they need.

The database of rogue agents and landlords was unveiled in April 2018 but has since failed to deliver in highlighting the number of unscrupulous landlords and estate agents as was predicted.

Since the register was unveiled, it has been mandatory for housing authorities to report when an agent or landlord has received a banning order.

Councils have been able to use discretion

However, poor legislation means that councils have been able to use discretion over whether to add details to the register where the agent or landlord has received two or more civil penalties within a year or has been convicted of a banning order offence.

Now, the government’s new portal will offer a single ‘front door’ for a landlord to understand their responsibilities and for tenants to find out whether their landlord is complying with laws.

The portal will also, the government says, help councils crackdown on criminal landlords.

A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said: “As set out in the ‘a fairer private rented sector’ White Paper, we will introduce a new Property Portal to make sure that tenants, landlords and local councils have the information they need.

‘Better data to crack down on criminal landlords’

“The portal will provide a single ‘front door’ for landlords to understand their responsibilities, tenants will be able to access information about their landlord’s compliance, and local councils will have access to better data to crack down on criminal landlords.

“We also intend to incorporate some of the functionality of the Database of Rogue Landlords, mandating the entry of all eligible unspent landlord offences and making them publicly visible.”