A National Landlord's Register: do we really need one?
Soon it'll be law for landlords to be officially registered - a marmite concept that the property sector has been chewing over for years. But what would a National Landlord’s Register entail, and what are the pros and cons?
Devolution, eh? Nationalists like Nicola Sturgeon love it. They can take the initiative, create their own policies, and show the English how things should be done. Another way of looking at things, however, is that devolution enables the Westminster government to bide their time and see how much-discussed policy ideas pan out in the principalities before they’re introduced nationwide. And one such example, of course, is the establishment of a National Landlord’s Register - a marmite concept that the property sector has been chewing over for years.
Introduced north of the border almost two decades ago, in Northern Ireland nine years ago, and Wales eight years ago, the requirement for all landlords to be officially registered is finally set to become law in England, too: it’s a key element of the much-anticipated Renters Reform Bill alongside the abolition of no-fault evictions, the creation of a private rented ombudsman, and the introduction of a Decent Homes Standard. This has delighted charities like Shelter and Generation Rent. However, whisper it quietly, not everyone is in favour.
What does a National Landlord’s Register involve?
Although we don’t yet know exactly how the new register will work, the concept is to create a national database that holds all-important information on landlords and their properties. Landlords will have to register all their tenanted properties, declare all the accompanying compliance documentation, and sign up to a code of practice. We can also expect the register to hold information on rents charged.
This will obviously be great news for tenants. They’ll be able to check a landlord’s track record and see whether they’ve ever had a criminal conviction or enforcement action taken against them. They’ll also be able to check whether their potential new landlord has ever discriminated against a tenant, harassed or illegally evicted a tenant, refused to carry out essential repairs, or tried to increase rents beyond an acceptable level. This will obviously give them peace of mind before they sign on the dotted line.
As for the bottom line, a National Landlord’s Register would force landlords to be on their best behaviour. After all, tenants will have a ready-made means to report a landlord who’s acting unethically or unreasonably. It will then be easier for local councils to identify rogue landlords and come down on them like a ton of bricks (or several tons of bricks).
Should landlords be nervous? Well, in Scotland, landlords are now subject to a fit and proper persons’ test, which sounds a tad intimidating if you ask us. What’s more, the penalties for renting out a property without being registered are eye-watering: up to 50,000 squids if warnings are ignored. Ouch.
The pros
The benefits of a National Landlord’s Register are quite obvious really. Regulating the private rented sector (PRS) has always been tricky because there’s a general lack of information. Unless it’s a multiple occupancy tenancy - landlords do have to register HMOs - councils have little ability to track where rented properties are or who is renting them out. Consequently, it’s nigh on impossible for tenants to know who they’re getting into bed with. It’s hard for agents to know who they’re working with, too.
Keeping an active register of landlords, which is updated as new information becomes available, therefore seems like a no-brainer. It would ensure that landlords meet all relevant standards - so tragic incidents like the death of Awaab Ishak are reduced - and it would stop fake landlords from taking deposits and then disappearing. Tenants will always be able to check that their landlord is for real.
A National Landlord’s Register would also reduce the burden on councils, making it easier for them to weed out poisonous rogues and reducing instances where they’re forced to step in. A register would also help councils to locate hard-to-track-down landlords (which can take months) and prevent rogues from moving to a new town once they’ve been rumbled in their immediate vicinity. A joined-up national register, which can be accessed by local authorities everywhere, would ensure there’s no escape.
The big question, of course, is whether these potential benefits would materialise in practice. Well, research by Generation Rent indicates that it would: their analysis shows councils that license landlords take twice as many enforcement actions. Meanwhile, The Centre for Public Data has discovered that anti-social behaviour is lower in areas that licence landlords. So maybe we do have a silver bullet on our hands…
The cons
… or maybe not. The problem with introducing a National Landlord’s Register is that it wouldn’t be welcome news for landlords at a time when many are exiting the sector and there’s already a chronic shortage of available properties to rent. Yes, it could be argued that good landlords have nothing to fear. And yes, it might even be argued that good landlords should embrace the opportunity to show off their impeccable records. However, the reality is that a register would create yet another horrible hoop to jump through. What’s more, it might look like landlords are being demonised all over again.
Another problem is that a National Landlord’s Register would require funding to set up and manage. And all this requires extra resources at a time when the public coffers are tighter than a wrestler’s tights. Although landlords could be charged to join the register, and this money could be reinvested back into the system, asking landlords to cough up even more money (when their taxes are going up and many need to improve their EPCs) would be, well, a bit cheeky.
Another major obstacle is figuring out how a National Landlord’s Register might be policed. Our very own Mark Hayward argued back in 2020 that it’s “going to be a vast piece of work to find out who [private landlords] are, where they are and how they could be regulated.” Therefore, the government could end up spending millions on a project that local authorities can’t support.
Some might argue, of course, that the tenants themselves (by reporting bad behaviour) could police the system. However, tenants aren’t always the most objective judges. What’s more, they might not want to shop their landlord. After all, if their landlord is struck off then they’ll have nowhere to live.
Meanwhile, not all experts are convinced that Scotland’s register has been a success. When working as Rightmove’s Legal and Compliance Director in 2021, David Cox argued that Scotland’s register “didn’t work” and claimed it would just become a “data collection opportunity” for local councils if introduced south of the border. He has also argued that local property licencing schemes don’t improve housing stock or landlord behaviour.
Isobel Thomson, the CEO of safeagent, is another sceptic. She believes that the register would simply increase bureaucracy: “the sector needs a solution which will root out rogue landlords and not one where good landlords face a complex array of licensing schemes and escalating costs.”
So thumbs up or down?
There’s no doubt that a National Landlord’s Register is a good idea in theory. After all, what’s not to like about cracking down on rogues? Furthermore, there’s little doubt that something needs to change: councils received over 40,000 category-one hazard complaints (where there’s an immediate risk to safety) during the last five years but only 1% led to prosecutions. This shows that bad landlords are getting away with murder - almost literally in some cases.
The problem, though, is that something desperately needs to change for landlords, too. And a National Landlord’s Register just ain’t it. Therefore, the idea might solve the problem of rogue landlords only to exacerbate another problem - the increasing number of landlords selling up. And this would only make the housing crisis worse and drive rents higher.
Policing the system could also be a can of worms. After all, how does one objectively decide what constitutes ‘harassment’, ‘discrimination’ or even ‘an unfair eviction’ in a landlord / tenant relationship? And who would ultimately make the decision? We surely can’t leave tenants as the ultimate arbiters of what’s ‘fair’.
Having said that, however, few new initiatives come without flaws. And the existence of these flaws (and grey areas) doesn’t automatically make an idea worthless. It just means that the government will need to think things through carefully, and learn from the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish experiences, before they implement their new register.
In the end, like any proposal, we’ll just have to wait and see how things unfold. Nobody wants a system that’s full of loopholes (which rogues can exploit) or a register that creates intolerable collateral damage. But nobody wants no action, either.
So do we really need a National Landlord’s Register? It’s hard to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Come back to us in ten years when we’ve got the benefit of hindsight. Until then, ‘maybe’ will have to do.