You're about to sign for a flat you like, and you know almost nothing about the person you'll be handing rent to every month. You don't know whether they're registered anywhere they should be, or whether a council has penalised them before for how they treat tenants. Until now, finding out meant piecing it together from whatever your council happened to publish.
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 is changing that. It sets up a national database of private landlords and their rental homes in England, and once the public side is switched on, a prospective tenant will be able to look a landlord up before signing. It isn't live yet, so here is what it will show, when it arrives, and why a landlord who isn't on it should give you pause.
What is the Renters' Rights Act landlord database?
The Private Rented Sector Database is a single national record of private landlords in England and the homes they let. It is created by Part 2, Chapter 3 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025, which requires a landlord to make two kinds of entry: one for themselves as a landlord, and one for each property they rent out.
A landlord has to keep their entry active and up to date, and pay a fee for each property when it is registered and again each year on renewal, to keep it live. Government will run the database, and it will be tied into councils' enforcement work, so serious enforcement action, such as a banning order, is recorded against the landlord.
This is a national scheme, separate from property licensing. Mandatory HMO licensing applies to larger HMOs everywhere, and some councils also run additional or selective licensing in particular areas. Many landlords need both a licence and a database entry.
What can you check about a landlord before renting?
Once public access is switched on, the database is expected to let a renter see the landlord behind a property, confirm the home itself is registered, and view the safety and compliance information attached to it, such as gas, electrical and energy performance records. It is also expected to show some enforcement history. Councils will have to record banning orders, and convictions or penalties for banning-order offences, that they obtain or impose, and government says it will make certain details of offences visible to tenants.
The exact fields that will be visible to the public are set by regulations that government has still to finalise, so treat the detail as the shape of the thing rather than a fixed list. The core idea is settled: for the first time, the information a careful renter wants before committing to a tenancy will sit in one place they can check.
When does the landlord database go live in England?
The rollout runs in order, and landlord registration comes first. It opens on 15 December 2026 in the West Midlands, through a government service called Register your rental property, then rolls out region by region over about a year. When registration reaches a region, landlords there get three months to sign up, and every landlord actively letting a property must be registered by 14 November 2027. At first the duty covers homes that are already let or become occupied during the rollout.
Public and tenant access follows that registration phase rather than arriving with it. So you cannot search the database for your landlord today, and you won't be able to on the day landlords first start signing up. Government says tenants will be able to look landlords up in the future, and will publish what the public can see at a later stage. Dates in this area have moved before, so check the current position on gov.uk when you are renting.
Can a landlord let a home without registering on the database?
Under section 82 of the Act, once the registration duty applies, a landlord must keep an active database entry for themselves and for each home they let, and a home must not be marketed for letting without those entries. These duties are not in force yet. Government is switching them on region by region from 15 December 2026, starting with homes that are already let. If your landlord isn't registered, your tenancy is still valid.
The registration duty reaches further than that. Once in force, section 90 stops a court making a possession order against you while your landlord is in breach of the registration duty, unless the landlord is relying on one of the two antisocial-behaviour grounds (Ground 7A or Ground 14). On any other ground, including rent arrears or wanting to sell or move in, an unregistered landlord cannot get a possession order until they register.
A landlord who breaks these rules faces a financial penalty of up to £7,000. If they keep breaching them after being penalised, break them again within five years, or knowingly or recklessly give the database false or misleading information, that is a criminal offence. The council can then prosecute or impose a penalty of up to £40,000 instead.
What does it mean if a landlord isn't on the database?
Once the register is running, a landlord you cannot find on it is a signal worth taking seriously. Until your region's three-month sign-up window has closed, which is 14 November 2027 at the latest, a landlord may not yet be due to register. It may be an innocent gap, an application still going through, so the first step is to ask them. A landlord who is registered will have no trouble showing you.
If they cannot point to an entry, or they get defensive about a straightforward question, that tells you something about how the rest of the tenancy is likely to go. A landlord willing to skip a legal duty on day one is not a landlord you want to be chasing over a deposit or a repair later. You are allowed to walk away from a property, and an unregistered landlord is a reasonable reason to.
What to do if you find enforcement action against your landlord
Seeing a past penalty on the database is not, on its own, a reason to panic. Plenty of landlords have had a run-in with a council and since put things right. What matters is the pattern and how recent it is. A single old entry is different from a string of enforcement actions.
If something on the record concerns you, or your current landlord turns out not to be registered when they should be, you have real options. You can raise it with your council's private-sector housing team, who enforce the database rules, and you can weigh up whether this is a tenancy worth taking on. The database will sit alongside the new landlord ombudsman, which will handle complaints once you are renting. Government expects landlords to have to join it in 2028, and we cover what you can do in the meantime in how to complain about your landlord before the PRS Ombudsman opens.
Found a penalty on a landlord's record, or a landlord who can't show you a registration? Remedy can explain what it means for the tenancy before you sign.
