PRS Database: What Croydon Landlords Need to Know

I’ll start with where I stand. I support the principle of a national register of landlords and rented homes. Anyone who’s spent time around the rental market knows that some people operate in the shadows, and councils have struggled to find them.

My concern is whether this database will actually do that job, or whether it will simply charge the landlords who were already doing things properly.

What’s actually happening

The government’s “Register your rental property” service opens on 15 December 2026. Registration is compulsory, but it rolls out region by region. The West Midlands goes first, with a deadline of 14 March 2027. London starts on 15 July 2027, and landlords here will have until 14 October 2027 to register.

For each property you let on an assured tenancy, you’ll need to:

Create an entry for yourself as landlord, and a separate entry for each property.
Provide details of the tenancy, rent, number of occupiers and bedrooms.
Show your gas safety record, electrical report (EICR) and EPC.
Pay £65 per property, per year.

The landlord has to register personally. Agents can help supply information, but under the regulations they can’t register on your behalf.

Why the penalties matter more than the fee

£65 a property is annoying, not ruinous. What should get your attention is what happens if you don’t register.

Councils will be able to issue civil penalties of up to £7,000 for things like failing to keep your entry updated, and up to £40,000 for providing false information. Tenants can apply for rent repayment orders in some cases. And, most importantly for anyone thinking about their exit, a court can’t grant possession (other than for anti-social behaviour) if you don’t have an active landlord and property entry.

With Section 21 gone, that matters. A landlord who needs to serve a Section 8 notice and finds the court won’t proceed because of a missed registration has a very expensive problem. Note that some of these enforcement powers still need further legislation before councils can use them, but I wouldn’t plan around that gap.

Where I share the NRLA’s concerns

The NRLA has been fairly consistent. It backed the idea of a database early on, as a way to drive out rogue and criminal landlords. Since the regulations were published it has become much more critical.

Ben Beadle, the NRLA’s chief executive, has warned that the database risks becoming little more than a national directory for councils. In October the NRLA went further, calling it a multi-million pound “rip-off”. Its sums: with just over five million private rented homes in England, £65 each comes to around £327 million a year. That cost, it says, will ultimately be borne by renters.

I think the NRLA is right on the central point. If the database only tells councils what they already know, and gives tenants very little, then we’ve built something expensive and not very useful. The NRLA also points out that the government’s own impact assessment assumed a much lower fee of £28.58, which tells you how far costs have moved from the original thinking.

What Nottingham tells us

Nottingham is worth looking at because it has been running landlord licensing for years. The city council introduced selective licensing in August 2018, and its website now lists mandatory, additional and selective schemes. Nottingham is effectively a live test of what happens when a council tries to put a whole private rented sector on a register.

The picture is mixed, and I don’t want to be one-sided. The Local Government Ombudsman looked at a landlord’s complaint about the scheme and found no fault in how the council introduced it. But criticism has followed it from the start. At the time, critics said the council was focusing on responsible landlords who applied, rather than finding the ones who stayed hidden.

That’s my fear for the national database. Landlords who comply will register, pay and upload their certificates. The ones operating under the radar will carry on exactly as before, unless councils have the money and staff to go and find them. The NRLA has also asked why selective licensing is still needed once councils can see the database. Some Nottingham landlords have made the same point: the council already holds much of this information through licensing. In areas with both, you pay twice and report twice.

Where I’d be fair to the government: a database does give councils something they’ve never had, which is one consistent starting point. Whether it makes a difference depends on enforcement funding, and so far that’s the part nobody has answered.

What I’d do now

Get your paperwork in order. Gas safety record, EICR and EPC for every property. You’ll need to upload them, and you’ll need to update the entry within 28 days whenever something changes, such as a renewed certificate or a rent increase.
Check your dates. For Croydon and the rest of London, that’s registration from 15 July 2027 with a deadline of 14 October 2027. You can register early from December if you prefer to get it done.
Don’t assume your agent will do it. They can help with information, but the registration is yours.
Budget for it. £65 a property each year, on top of any licensing fees. It should be an allowable expense, but check with your accountant.
If you’re selling a tenanted property, expect buyers and their solicitors to ask whether it’s registered and whether the certificates are in order. A property that’s messy on paper is harder to sell.

My view

I’d like the database to work. A fair system should make life harder for bad landlords and easier for good ones to show they’re compliant. But there’s a difference between a register and a solution, and so far this looks like the former.

If you’re a landlord in Croydon or South London and you’re unsure how this affects your portfolio, your tenancies or a planned sale, get in touch. It’s much easier to sort this out now than to find out at a possession hearing.

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