England’s landlord register now has a start date, and the government says registration will cost £65 a year per property. The government’s implementation roadmap committed to rolling out the Private Rented Sector Database, the PRS Database, from late 2026, region by region, and on 9 September 2026 the government confirmed that its ‘Register your rental property’ service opens on 15 December 2026, starting in the West Midlands. In August, Propertymark, which represents letting agents, warned that the database risks duplicating paperwork licensed landlords already file unless it is coordinated with existing licensing systems.
That fight is worth following, but it is not the part that costs money. The parts that do are now set out in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the government’s rollout plans: what has to go on the register, a £65 annual fee per property, what happens to possession rights if a landlord is not registered, and penalties that will run to £40,000 once those sections are in force.
In short
- The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 will set penalties of up to £40,000 once the enforcement sections are in force, and the government has published what must go on the register.
- Registration opens on 15 December 2026 in the West Midlands, and the last regional deadline is 14 November 2027.
- The government says the fee will be £65 a year per property.
- Once in force, the Act will stop a court granting a possession order while the landlord is in breach of the database duty, except on antisocial behaviour grounds.
- Pull the gas, electrical and EPC documents before exchange, since a gap in them is a gap in the register.
What landlords must register
The roadmap sets a minimum for every let property. Landlords register themselves and each dwelling, giving contact details, the full address, the property type, the number of bedrooms, the number of households or residents, and whether the property is occupied and furnished. Alongside that sits the safety paperwork: gas, electrical and Energy Performance Certificates.
The government’s registration guidance adds the rent charged and any HMO, additional or selective licence numbers, and asks for copies of the gas safety record, the electrical report and the EPC to be uploaded.
Read as an investor rather than as a form-filler, that is a disclosure regime built almost entirely out of documents a compliant landlord already holds. What is new is that the absence of them becomes visible to councils, and later to tenants once the public side of the service launches, rather than surfacing years later in a dispute. A flat whose EPC cannot be produced stops being an untidy file and becomes a gap on a government register.
When the PRS Database rollout starts
The Act has Royal Assent, so the database is legislated. Draft regulations laid before Parliament for approval set the date the registration requirement reaches each region. The government’s guidance then gives landlords three months from that date to register, after which councils in that region can start enforcement.
| Region | Requirement starts | Deadline to register |
|---|---|---|
| West Midlands | 15 December 2026 | 14 March 2027 |
| East of England | 15 January 2027 | 14 April 2027 |
| East Midlands | 15 February 2027 | 14 May 2027 |
| South East | 15 March 2027 | 14 June 2027 |
| Yorkshire and Humber | 15 April 2027 | 14 July 2027 |
| North West | 15 May 2027 | 14 August 2027 |
| North East | 15 June 2027 | 14 September 2027 |
| London | 15 July 2027 | 14 October 2027 |
| South West | 15 August 2027 | 14 November 2027 |
The deadline follows the property, not the landlord, so a London landlord with a flat in Birmingham works to the West Midlands dates. For now the requirement covers properties that are let, or become let during the rollout. The government says later legislation will require empty properties to be registered before they are marketed, once the public side of the service launches.
The same phase carries the Private Landlord Ombudsman, though on a slower clock. The government expects mandatory membership in 2028, and only when it is satisfied the service is ready. Anyone reading the two as a single 2026 event is compressing about two years of sequencing.
The £65 annual fee per property
Section 81 of the Act gives the power to charge fees for landlord and dwelling entries. The government’s registration guidance sets the fee at £65 a year for each property registered, renewed every year, with the charge pro-rated during the rollout so that landlords who register first do not pay more. The draft regulations have not yet been made. They name no figure and leave the amount to the database operator, set by reference to its costs.
Cost therefore scales with the number of doors held rather than the number of landlords. A landlord with ten let properties would pay £650 a year.
Propertymark’s objection is that landlords already licensed under a selective scheme will file much of this twice. It is a reasonable point and it is also a lobbying position from a body that represents agents, so it is an argument being made rather than a change that has happened.
If it succeeds the effect would be at the margin of the fee, not the existence of the register. Landlords already paying for selective licensing should assume both costs until told otherwise.
No entry, no possession order
The enforcement is where this stops being administrative. Sections 90 and 91 are law but had not been brought into force at the last check in September 2026. Once in force, section 90 will stop a court making an order for possession while the landlord is in breach of the duty under section 82(3)(a) to hold an active database entry. The carve outs are narrow: Ground 7A and Ground 14, both antisocial behaviour grounds, still run. Everything else does not.
Follow that through to the case that actually happens. A landlord who has not registered, facing a tenant in arrears, has no route to a possession order on the arrears ground until the entry is made. The register converts a filing omission into a rent problem with no exit, which is a cash flow risk rather than a compliance one. It sits directly on top of the tighter possession regime that replaced Section 21 in May 2026.
Once in force, section 91 sets the money: a local authority will be able to impose a penalty of up to £7,000 for breaching the registration requirements, rising to up to £40,000 where it is satisfied an offence under section 92 has been committed. Penalties will also be repeatable on a continuing breach after 28 days.
What this means for property investors
For anyone buying tenanted stock, the register becomes a due diligence surface rather than background policy. The duty attaches to whoever is the landlord at the time, so a buyer needs their own entry and does not inherit the seller’s. The practical move is to pull the gas, electrical and EPC documents before exchange, because those are the register’s inputs and a gap in them is a gap in the buyer’s own entry.
Three things to price. An annual fee the government puts at £65 per property, renewed every year. A rollout from 15 December 2026 to 14 November 2027 where obligations arrive region by region, so two identical properties may be on different clocks. And a possession bar that applies from the day the buyer becomes the landlord, so a seller who kept poor safety paperwork leaves the buyer those gaps to fill before the entry is complete. All of them change what needs checking before a deal proceeds.
This is general information, not advice on your position, so take independent advice before acting.
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