The Private Rented Sector Database is a national register of private landlords and rented properties in England, created by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, with mandatory registration beginning from late 2026 and phased in from there. It is not a licence and there is no test to pass. But it does become a gate: once the relevant provisions are live, a landlord who is not registered will not be able to obtain a possession order through the courts, and letting an unregistered property will attract a civil penalty.
Nothing is required of you today. What is worth doing today is getting the underlying records into a state where registration takes twenty minutes rather than a fortnight.
Why the database exists
Government has no reliable picture of who lets property in England or what condition it is in. Councils enforce against landlords they can find, which in practice means the ones already licensed or already complained about. The database is intended to close that gap — giving local authorities a searchable list, giving tenants a way to check a landlord before they commit, and giving the sector a single place where compliance documents sit.
Some of the entry will be publicly visible and some restricted to enforcement bodies. The split is being confirmed through the phased rollout, but the working assumption should be that anything you register may be seen by a prospective tenant.
What you will need to register
Expect the entry to cover three things: you, the property, and its compliance position.
You. Landlord name, a service address, and contact details. Where the landlord is a company, the company details. Where an agent manages the property, the agent’s details too.
The property. Address, and information about the letting itself — the type of tenancy and, in all likelihood, the rent being charged. Properties are registered individually, so a portfolio means an entry each.
Compliance. This is the part that catches people. Gas safety certificate, EICR, EPC, and any relevant licence — HMO or selective — are the documents that make an entry complete. Any banning order or relevant enforcement history attaches here as well.
The practical problem for most landlords
Very few self-managing landlords could produce all four certificates for every property inside an hour. Gas certificates are annual and often sit in an email thread. EICRs run for five years and get filed and forgotten. EPCs last ten years and half the time nobody can remember which version is current. Expiry dates tracked on a whiteboard, or in someone’s head, are the norm rather than the exception.
That was survivable when nobody asked. It stops being survivable when a court will not grant possession because your entry is incomplete, and when the entry has to be kept accurate rather than filed once.
What to do in the next three months
Build the file before you are asked for it. One folder per property, containing the current gas safety record, the current EICR, the EPC, the licence if there is one, the deposit protection certificate, and the written statement of terms or Information Sheet you served. Put the expiry date of each certificate in a calendar with a 90-day and a 30-day reminder — not a whiteboard.
Then check the ones most likely to be out of date. Gas safety records are the most common gap because they need renewing every year. EICRs are the most commonly missing altogether. EPCs matter twice over, because minimum EPC C is targeted for 2030 and a database entry showing an F or G is a visible problem. If the property is a shared house, confirm whether it needs an HMO licence in Guildford — the answer surprises people.
How this fits with everything else
The database is one of three phases still to land. A landlord Ombudsman with mandatory membership is expected in 2028. Standards changes — Awaab’s Law extended to private rentals, a Decent Homes Standard, minimum EPC C — follow on longer timescales. The changes that are already live, and already enforceable, are set out in our guide to the Renters’ Rights Act.
The registration duty is administrative rather than difficult. The risk is not that you will fail to register — it is that you will go to register in a hurry, discover an EICR expired in 2024, and find your possession claim stalled behind it.
If you would rather this was somebody else’s job
Certificate tracking, document storage and registration upkeep are exactly the sort of thing that gets dropped when you have a day job. It is also most of what a managing agent is for. Whether self-managing still makes sense is worth revisiting before the database goes live rather than after.
General information, not legal advice. Property Lounge, Guildford.
Need a second opinion?
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