The Private Rented Sector Database and the Landlord Redress Scheme: What Is Actually Live

Your landlords have read about a landlord database and a landlord ombudsman. They want to know what they have to do, and when.

The one-line answer

Nothing, yet. Neither register is a live duty. Nobody can register on anything, no fee exists in law, and the redress scheme your agency already belongs to is a different regime from the one landlords will eventually have to join.

That is the answer to give on the phone. Two follow-ups always come next, and both are counter-intuitive. You will get both. For the enforcement machinery that surrounds all of this, see our civil penalty and banning order guide. For the property-condition rules landlords often confuse with the database, see the Decent Homes Standard checklist.

What is actually in force today?

Start with the distinction almost nobody explains. A section of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 can be drafted, debated and passed and still do nothing at all. It only starts binding anyone on the day a commencement order switches it on.

That is why the database can be in the Act and not in force, and why both halves of that sentence are true.

Three things are live, and none of them is what your landlords think. You can give a landlord all three in under a minute:

• Section 74 of the redress chapter, since 1 May 2026. It is a jurisdictional boundary provision. It amends the Local Government Act 1974 to adjust where certain housing complaints go, between the local government ombudsman and the housing ombudsman scheme. It does not extend redress to landlords and it gives your landlord clients nothing to join.
• The regulation-making powers in both chapters of the Renters' Rights Act 2025, since Royal Assent in October 2025. The accurate sentence is that they are in force for regulation-making only and no regulations have been made. Ministers can write the rules. They have not written them.
• A further tranche elsewhere in the Act, since 22 June 2026. Local housing authorities can now impose civil penalties of up to £7,000 for category 1 hazards, and penalty income can fund enforcement involving superior landlords. That is enforcement plumbing under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. It is not the Decent Homes Standard, whatever a landlord thinks it means.

No further commencement order has been made since that tranche.

What is not in force yet?

Everything your landlords are actually asking about. None of it is something you can action this month.

• The duty to register on the private rented sector database. That duty is marked prospective, which is the statute book's own word for a section waiting on a commencement order.
• The duty for a landlord to belong to an approved redress scheme. No scheme regulations exist at all.
• Every fee, data field, deadline and mechanic that regulations would have to set.

Milestone	Where it stands	Expected timing
Landlord registration on the database	Not in force. Regulation-making powers only, no regulations made	Regional rollout for landlords and councils from late 2026 (indicative)
Landlord membership of an approved redress scheme	Not in force. No scheme regulations of any kind	Mandatory membership in 2028 (indicative)

Treat both expected years as indicative. The government has committed to them, but only later regulations will confirm them. Until then, phrase it as a future when you answer. Say "when the database opens, you will need to register", never "you must register now".

Your agency's duty and your landlord's duty are not the same thing

This is the confusion the whole page exists to clear up, and it is worth getting fluent in, because you will explain it more times than you want to before the database opens.

The duty you already have

You have belonged to an approved redress scheme since 1 October 2014. Every letting and managing agent has. Two approved schemes are open to agents today: The Property Ombudsman, and Property Redress, which is the Property Redress Scheme under its current name. A third, Ombudsman Services: Property, left the sector in 2018.

Nothing in the Renters' Rights Act 2025 changed that duty. It is old news, and it is yours. Anyone telling you that agents joined the redress regime through the Act has it backwards. If you are ever asked to prove it, the scheme membership you already renew every year is the whole answer.

The duty your landlord does not have yet

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 creates a separate landlord redress scheme, additional to yours and joined by the landlord rather than by you. Your landlord will have to join in their own name. They will not join through you, and your membership does nothing for them.

That regime has no scheme regulations behind it. Mandatory membership is expected in 2028, and that year is an expectation rather than a date in law. The Act also allows for more than one approved scheme. "The landlord ombudsman" is what landlords call it, not what the Act sets up. Our guide to landlord enrolment in the approved redress scheme regime covers that architecture in depth.

The sentence to say on the phone

"You're in a redress scheme, doesn't that cover me?"

No. The scheme you belong to covers complaints about your agency. When the landlord regime arrives, your landlord will need their own membership. Today there is nothing for them to join.

That call keeps happening because both halves of the answer are counter-intuitive. Your landlord has read a headline about a landlord ombudsman, knows their agent is in a redress scheme, and concludes they are covered. They are not covered, and there is nothing to sign up to.

What will the private rented sector database actually be?

"Do I need to register on the landlord database?" Not yet, and there is nowhere to do it. Here is what you will be dealing with when there is.

A register with two entry types, plus a record of people subject to banning orders or convictions for relevant offences. One entry for the landlord. One entry for each dwelling. A continuing duty to keep an active entry up to date.

The data fields are a working expectation and nothing more. Regulations will set the required information, the evidence, the timelines and the fees, and none of those regulations has been made. On that basis, the landlord database is expected to want:

• From the landlord: name, address, contact details, and any banning order or conviction for a relevant offence.
• From each dwelling: the address, whether it is currently let, the gas safety record, the electrical installation condition report, the energy performance certificate, the deposit protection reference, the Right to Rent check, and any HMO or selective licence.

If you manage the property, you already hold every line of that second list.

Is this the rogue landlord list?

No, and you will be asked this one, so say so plainly. The two registers get merged in landlords' heads. The rogue landlord database under the Housing and Planning Act 2016 has run since 6 April 2018 and is still in force. It is offence-driven: a landlord goes on it after a banning order, a conviction for a banning-order offence, or repeat civil penalties. The Secretary of State operates it and local housing authorities make the entries. When the new database commences, the Renters' Rights Act 2025 will add a signpost from that register across to it. The new database is the opposite shape. It will cover every landlord, whatever their record.

Why does the marketing restriction land on you rather than your landlord?

Because you write the listing.

Once the database duty in the Renters' Rights Act 2025 commences, marketing a dwelling without an active entry will be an offence. The tenancy contract itself stays valid, which is the first thing a worried landlord asks about. But the advert is the thing that goes wrong, and the advert is yours: the portal listing, the window card, the social post.

So your listing workflow becomes the compliance surface for somebody else's registration duty. When the database opens, "is this property registered" belongs in your pre-listing checks, next to the gas safety record and the deposit reference. That is the change most likely to land on your desk rather than your landlord's, and you will feel it before they do.

What will registration cost?

Nobody knows, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

The fee power in the Renters' Rights Act 2025 is in force. No fee regulations have been made under it. So there is no fee in law. Every figure in circulation was somebody's guess, published with confidence. If your agency repeats one to a landlord, you are passing on that guess with your own name attached to it.

"Someone rang me offering to do my landlord registration for me, should I?"

No. There is nothing to register on. Nobody can charge for access to a register that does not exist.

Apply the same test to timing. Nobody can make a landlord register early, and nobody can charge them to. That is a genuinely useful thing for an agent to say out loud, and most landlords will not hear it anywhere else.

What happens if a landlord is not registered?

Once the duties commence, and only then, a landlord you act for is exposed on two fronts. On the redress side the shape is settled: a penalty of up to £7,000 where a local housing authority treats the failure as a breach, and up to £40,000 where it deals with it as an offence. The enrolment guide linked above covers that side in depth. The database side carries its own penalty and offence regime, and the figures for it will be set alongside the regulations. Knowingly false information, and carrying on after a penalty notice, sit at the criminal end of both. None of it reaches anyone on your books today.

The sharper consequence is possession. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 writes the restriction into the Housing Act 1988, so that once the database duty is in force a court will not be able to make a possession order while the landlord is in breach of the registration duty, apart from on the anti-social behaviour grounds. For a landlord who might one day need a Section 8 notice, that is a better argument for registering promptly than any penalty figure. The possession route itself is covered in our guide to possession after Section 21.

Will the fees be deductible against rental income?

Yes, when they arrive. Scheme membership and database registration will be regulatory costs of running a rental business, so they will be deductible against rental income in the same way as licensing fees. The reasoning is the one set out in our guide to HMO licensing fee deductibility.

Two points are worth having ready, because you will be asked. A financial penalty for a regulatory breach is never deductible. Professional fees spent defending a notice usually are, where they are revenue in character.

What has not changed

Nothing below changed. It is worth being able to say so without checking:

• Your agency's own redress scheme membership, unchanged since 2014 and untouched by the Renters' Rights Act 2025.
• Deposit protection under the Housing Act 2004, including the timescales and the prescribed information.
• Gas safety, electrical installation condition reports and energy performance certificates.
• Right to Rent checks.
• HMO licensing and selective licensing under the Housing Act 2004, which the database will not replace.
• The possession grounds in the Housing Act 1988, which have not moved since they took their current shape on 1 May 2026.
• The rogue landlord database under the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which continues alongside.
• The fact that no landlord can register for anything today.

The file you already keep

Every managed property in your book already has a compliance file. That file is the whole job. Nothing here asks you to start something new, and there is no deadline to work back from yet.

Four things are worth tidying in it now, so that when registration opens you are moving data rather than running a project:

1. One folder per property, complete. Gas safety record, electrical report, energy certificate, deposit reference, Right to Rent evidence, licence where one applies.
2. Find the gaps while there is nothing to register. A lapsed certificate is easier to fix now than in the week a portal opens.
3. Keep one portfolio-level view across the managed book. One row per property, the same columns as the folder. You will need to answer "how many of ours are ready" in one look.
4. Write down who registers. Put it in the management agreement now, for every landlord you act for, so the question is settled before it is urgent.

Do that, and when the database opens you are exporting a spreadsheet rather than chasing every landlord in your book for certificates.

References: Renters' Rights Act 2025 (2025 c. 26), sections 74, 75, 77, 82, 90 and 145(2); SI 2026/421 reg.3; SI 2026/638; SI 2014/2359; Housing and Planning Act 2016 s.28 (as amended by RRA 2025 s.94(2)); ITTOIA 2005 s.272.