Is the government’s PRS Database registration putting landlords at risk?

This is appalling – why should we be exposed to such risks?
Truly terrifying.
Identity fraud is constantly increasing and the government imposes complex legislation supposedly designed to protect data privacy and then does this!
Making all landlords sitting targets. And making us pay an annual Charge for this privilege!
How much does it actually cost to set up and run a database? Where will all those fees go year after year???
It’s another huge money grabbing scam.

A Criminal can change their name by Deed Poll for £53 at the High Court and PUFF your past vanishes like the wind.
If you change your Sex as well then the Police can’t even inform a new partner that they now have a convicted sex offender living with them and their children.
So what chance do any of you think they would say to a Potential Landlord.
New driving licence ( Free ) and passport change £102 with the new name.
Now as a HMO Landlord my home address has been on a public database base for over 10 years and we receive letters every week from Rent to Rent companies ( set up last year in his bedroom for £25)
Removal firms, End of tenancy cleaning companies, Estate agents and Letting agents offering to sell our properties or find us tenants and mange the HMO for only 20% plus VAT !
Never mind the constant emails from AFS and NRLA offering to sell our HMO
Why does this new PRS database need my Date of Birth.
The Fraud that will happen once all this information is hacked or Leaked by someone ( think Left wing Labour think tank )will a grudge against the Nasty Landlord charging them £2500 a month to live in a shoebox in Landon

Reply to the comment left by Gently distressed at 24/09/2026 – 11:57
We don’t yet know what data from the database will be publicly available.

Current indications are that it will limited to “key legal requirements”.

Hopefully that’s accurate, and personal information will not be public.

Reply to the comment left by Jon Landlord at 24/09/2026 – 12:09
As I understand it unless you are a Ltd Company your private address has to be on the tenancy agreement, which is bad enough. My former rentals were local to me and I had tenants turning up on my doorstep which was unnerving. Another reason to sell up.
If you have a mortgage it’s apparently cheap and easy for anybody to do a search to find your mortgaged properties. A prospective tenant took a dislike to me (long story) and found all my rental properties by this means – also my former family home where I used to have a shared mortgage but no longer. He actually put a note through their door expressing his grievance with me and rang the doorbells of all the other flats at 6am every day. He also somehow found my landline number and I got threatening calls. My last two flats are tenant free and out for sale. Not before time!!!

Reply to the comment left by Helen at 24/09/2026 – 15:07
Is this not another GDPR breach if someone can pay to see your mortgage information. All these breaches should be reported to the ICO for fines to be issued and your MP should be asked to raise a Parliamentary question. I hope you reported his actions to the police. He should have at least been cautioned.

I had a tenant who told me he’d checked and found out I didn’t have a mortgage and then started threatening me and trying to extort money. He made a false claim to the council saying I had failed to take action about mice then threatened to sue me. He told me he could make my life hell unless I paid him to leave. And he was a lawyer. I took legal advice and was told to pay him to leave as the cost of fighting him would be higher. The final insult – he refused to leave until i signed a non-disclosure so I couldn’t denounce him to the law society.
I’ve learnt since this shyster travels the world pulling off this kind of crime. Threatening hotels and airbnbs with false reviews and lawsuits . . .
I’ve a landlord friend whose tenants stole his identity and took out loans in his name.
This database is just a gift for scammers thieves and conmen,

Reply to the comment left by Gently distressed at 24/09/2026 – 15:46
You can’t trust anybody so the less information out there the better. I had a tenant who was a high earning company lawyer. They were waiting for a house purchase to exchange and we were selling so had an arrangement as per the contract for sales viewings to be permitted. However, he decided not to allow it and changed the locks. He told me that by the time I’d taken legal action and evicted them they’d have left anyway.

Reply to the comment left by David at 24/09/2026 – 15:30
I was quite traumatised by it and also a single lady was by then living in the flat he was going to move into before he backed out suddenly (which was the cause of the disagreement) – he was knocking on her door early in the morning. He was a drunk, unstable thug (also owned a plumbing business with vans I still see around) and I didn’t want to make things worse. I settled it in the end but it could have been done with simple words rather than his threatening behaviour. The best thing is that he never became my tenant.

If I have to comply (hoping the tenants will leave before the section 8 expires) I will definitely be buying a ‘burner phone ‘ and probably including a code into my address so I will be able to spot problem messages easily.

I know a female landlord who was threatened at her home by a male tenant arriving there late at night. He was upset because she was evicting him for ASB to his neighbours. The data for landlords should never be available anywhere for these type of reasons. This puts all landlords at risk, especially women. However, such a database poses many other types of risks. For example, stalkers of people who are landlords (men and women landlords, but especially women) can then see that that landlord owns a property at address x. They can then hassle the tenants there to get at the landlord. So many ways by which this is a really dangerous idea, and poses a danger to landlords, to tenants and to property. Either the government are too stupid to have thought of the risks here, or they have done this on purpose. And there is no point telling people to ring the police: nobody can have themselves and/or their property protected 24/7 by police from mentally unstable dangerous stalkers and mentally ill people. That is not possible. There is also no point in saying any such data will be safe and secure in any way: all these data systems are hackable and we have many examples of data bases being hacked and released on the internet. I think that the Data Protection Act might stop this ridiculous idea, but then again maybe not. Perhaps someone could try and challenge this on the grounds of data protection and the resultant risks posed to people and to property and to general privacy. I think the privacy, safety and security issues have not been adequately discussed. Maybe some mid-wits at the government have not considered these very significant issues. Or maybe they have and this is a move to stop private landlords (especially women) from letting out properties. As well as the obvious dangers posed to landlords and tenants by this idea, there are also all the less obvious privacy concerns such as people’s information being available to people who want to know what they are doing in life, like exes, rivals, etc. And what do the mid wits who thought of this consider are the potential benefits of this? The criminal landlords will not do this anyway, all those with illegals living in their garden sheds, etc. are not going to register. As usual, this will harm the innocent and decent and not address any issues it purports to do. I wonder if they have conducted a cost benefit analysis on this in any way, probably not. Just more nonsense from a government who are not fit for purpose.