The government's private rented sector database will cost the sector more than £325m a year while giving tenants and landlords an extremely limited service, according to the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA).
The database, a central part of the Renters' Rights Act, will roll out from December. The government's Register Your Rental Property website sets the fee at £65 per property each year, almost seven times the figure ministers envisaged in the impact assessment for the Renters' Rights Bill. With just over five million private rented dwellings in England, the NRLA calculates a minimum cost of about £327m a year, which it says renters will ultimately bear.
The original impact assessment set out the assumed registration fee and renewal period. Page 88 of the document said: "Landlords will be required to re-register on the Private Rented Sector Database every three years", and page 89 said of the planned database: "the assumed per property registration fee is £28.58".
Duplication and compliance costs in the private rented sector database
Despite the projected costs, much of the information supplied to the database replicates what landlords already give to councils where licensing schemes operate. Such schemes can cost as much as £2,300 per property, and the most expensive, run by Arun District Council, charges £2,347 for a three or four person house or flat in areas designated as requiring an Additional HMO licence.
The government has no plans to digitise gas and electrical safety certificates in the way it has with Energy Performance Certificates. Landlords will have to scan and upload the certificates manually, which adds to the administrative cost of compliance. The burden will fall heaviest on larger landlords, including build-to-rent providers managing hundreds or thousands of properties.
The sector is also waiting for details of the cost to join the new private rented sector Ombudsman scheme, which most expect to be significantly more expensive, and is preparing for a rise in income tax rates on rental income of two percentage points from April 2027.
The NRLA also compared the database fee with the £54.85 maximum a garage can currently charge for an MOT test on a car.
"A well-designed database should make it easy for landlords to demonstrate compliance with their obligations; empower tenants; and be truly digital in every way," said Ben Beadle, chief executive of the NRLA. "This looks likely to fail on every count.
"What we have on offer is a costly mess. It expects payment for landlords to provide much the same information as many already give their councils, with no additional benefit to them or their customers.
"The mind boggles that landlords are to be forced to pay more to manually upload documents to a website than mechanics are permitted to charge to carry out an MOT check, which includes a comprehensive, hands-on examination of a car's roadworthiness. Frankly, landlords and tenants are being ripped off in the name of consumer protection.
"The hundreds of millions the sector will be expected to pour into this thin gruel of a database would be far better spent helping landlords meet the Government's energy efficiency targets."
