PRS database risks being a costly failure – TLIC

Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 05/08/2026 – 16:03
I doubt that.

its just going to be another place where good landlords sign up and are treated as low hanging fruit for reinforcement inspection drives looking for a justification to fine. councils need to do work to find the rogues who will not register.

Reply to the comment left by Darlington Landlord at 05/08/2026 – 20:26
I think this is absolutely the right assessment of what it will be. But labour didn’t publish the results of their justice impact assessment on the courts:

https://www.property118.com/government-refuses-to-reveal-renters-rights-bill-court-impact-assessment/

What this meant was that their Labour Renters Rights Bill did not get proper public scrutiny before being passed by a labour government with a significant majority in parliament.

And Labour also did not do any significant consultation of small portfolio landlords before they went ahead with the Labour Renters Rights Act or their proposals for their Labour Landlord Database; but small portfolio landlords are the bulk of the private rented sector.

I think that if Labour go ahead in the present climate with their Labour Landlord Database then a lot of small portfolio landlords will pull their properties out of the market rather than choose to list them on the Labour Landlord Database. I think that this will further compromise the supply of homes to the rental market and on top of the inflationary changes directly caused by the Labour Renters Rights Act this will push up rents even more. I think that on top of the rise in food prices caused by the drought and the increases in prices in the fuel market all of these pressures will push up UK inflation. And because all of these pressures will push up UK inflation the Bank of England will be forced to raise interest rates which will then in turn also cause upward pressure on rents because so many small portfolio landlords are leveraged and cannot offset their interest payments against rents.

I think that labour will create a vicious circle of upward-spiralling rents unless they decide to stop this project.

I don’t think that this Labour Landlord Database will do anything positive that the Land Registry shouldn’t already be doing. I think that instead of going ahead with this they should get the Land Registry to speed up the registration of leases and I also think that they should fix the EPC system they already have.

There is no significant public benefit to the Labour Landlord Database: They should cancel the project and use the money to fund some of their other unfunded proposals.

Reply to the comment left by Reluctant Landlord at 05/08/2026 – 14:52
I think that there is going to be a shift in the way voters vote at the next election anyway. The Telegraph just reported that labour has triggered the worst jobs slump since the 2008 financial crisis:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/08/05/labour-triggers-worst-jobs-slump-since-financial-crisis/?msockid=0b8a4155c7db6ba1058955b1c6196a07

After the 2008 financial crisis the growth in employment disproportionately came from small business. This is because 90% of employment in the UK is in small business.

Labour came to power saying that economic growth is a priority for them. Then they increased employers national insurance, dropped the threshold at which it was paid and proposed giving everyone employment rights on day one. I run a small business and the effect of labour’s first two budgets was devastating both on us and also on many of the businesses we work with, not just the small ones but the large ones as well.

Because 90% of employment is in small businesses, all over the country employees are being told (correctly) that their wages are being held down, recruitment is on hold or that the reason they are being laid offs is because of the Rachel Reeves jobs-taxes. And this is correct….labour SAY one thing, but they DO something else.

And this is the thing to really understand about the Labour Landlord Database. The Labour Renters Rights Act is not very much like the starting point for the rental reform bill; this is because it reached its final form in parliament under a majority labour government that was not listening to the minority voices of moderation in the Commons or the voices of moderation in the Lords and much of it did not have proper public scrutiny as it should have had in a democracy such as ours. And this is why the Labour Renters Rights Act is such a terrible piece of legislation.

The Labour Landlord Database will be a disaster for the same reason if it goes ahead: Labour SAY one thing but they DO something else.

What protections are being built in to prevent landlords being victims of fraud? At least with the land registry I can request that Im informed if anyone makes a query about any property that I own. But the PRS will make my ownership freely available to the public. So anyone who wants to impersonate me or steal my identity is being handed the means to do so.
The selective licensing schemes already put huge amounts of personal information into a juicy target for hackers and at high risk for data-leaks.
Tenant fraud is rising (see recent Panorama) and nothing is being done to prevent it. The Epc is already visible on any advert for a property,
Tenants who successfully complete vetting procedures can demand to be shown the gas and electric and licence papers – before they sign an agreement, so why do they need this database as well?

A database that we do actually all need now would be one that shows what rents are actually being paid for properties. Not the asking price but the actual agreed rents. Because how is any tenant or landlord going to know – and more to the point – prove that a proposed rent increase reflects the ‘fair market rate’ or not?

While local estate agents have access to some of this information, private landlords do not. So the idiotic new rule about rent increases is inherently impossible to adhere to or to adjudicate fairly.

We only have access to the advertised asking prices currently. And since the Reform law has banned bidding wars, any advertised price is going to be habitually inflated. All landlords are going to ask the highest price they can imagine – knowing they cant accept more than they’ve asked for.

I already anticipate that local agents will start charging landlords for preparing a ‘comparative rents’ document that they can use to support a rent increase.

So yet more costs to add to all the others. . .

Reply to the comment left by Pippa Brill at 08/08/2026 – 13:39
If the labour landlord database does go ahead, then as you suggest it will increase the risk of fraud either if any property details or if any landlord details are on it. If it does go ahead with prices on it then labour will use this record of prices to attack small portfolio landlords.

If you want to know what market rent is then you can find out by looking at Zoopla or Rightmove, but if you are using an agent then an agent will know.

My point is that on Zoopla or Rightmove all you can find out is what the ASKING price is – not the actual price that was eventually agreed.