The landlord database: what you need to register, and by when
In this blog:
- The three dates, and the only one that is a deadline
- Why this is two registrations, not one
- What a property entry asks for
- Why this is not a form you fill in once
- What it costs, and when it renews
- Who can do what, and how your service level changes it
Registration for the landlord database opens on 15 December 2026. If you let a property in Bracknell, Wokingham or the surrounding areas, you must be on it by 14 June 2027.
Six months between the dates, which sounds generous but it is less than it looks. This is not one form. It is two registrations, a long list of detail for every property, and a duty to keep it current that never switches off.
Here is the honest version of what it involves.
What the database is
A national register of landlords, rental properties and the safety information attached to them. Every landlord letting on an assured or regulated tenancy goes on it, and so does every property they let.
The point of it is visibility. A tenant can see a property is registered before they commit to it. A council can see who is letting what in its area. And a landlord who runs things properly finally gets a straightforward way of proving it, which is not something the sector has offered before.
Later, once the public side of it is finished, Landlord and Property Reference Numbers will need to appear in adverts. This becomes part of how a home goes to market.
Three dates, and what each one means
15 December 2026. The service opens. Every landlord in England can register from this day, including you, whether or not the rules have reached your region yet.
15 March 2027. Registration becomes mandatory across the Southeast.
14 June 2027. The date by which every Bracknell and Wokingham landlord has to be registered.
Only the last of those is a deadline. The first is an open door, and it is open to you from the day the service goes live. You are not waiting until March for permission.
The rest of England runs on its own schedule through 2027. If you own property outside the Southeast too, the dates that apply are the ones for the region that property sits in, not the one you live in. You can also register everything at once from December rather than tracking several regional timetables.
It is two registrations, not one
The database wants a landlord entry, and then a separate property entry for every home you let. They link together but they are completed separately, and the second one is the longer job.
Your landlord entry covers you. Name, date of birth, address, telephone and email. Straightforward if you own in your own name, more involved if you let through a company or a trust.
If you own jointly, every joint landlord registers. Not one of you on behalf of the others.
Then each property gets its own entry, and that is the longer job.
What a property entry asks for
This is the part people underestimate. For every single property:
The property. Full address. Freehold or leasehold. The details of the freeholder, property manager or superior landlord. Dwelling type. Number of bedrooms. Whether it is currently let.
The tenancy. The rent, how often it is paid and whether bills are included. How many people are living there, counting tenants and permitted occupiers. How many households. Whether it is an HMO and where it stands on licensing. Furnished, part-furnished or unfurnished.
The safety record. Your gas safety record and its issue date. A current EICR or EIC and its expiry date. The EPC and its details, or the tenancy start date if there is no current one. Any MEES exemption you are relying on.
You can make an entry before you have gathered all of it. What you cannot do is leave it there. The rest has to follow within 28 days.
Multiply that list by the number of properties you let, and you can see why this is a winter job rather than a spring one.
This is not a form you fill in once
May 2026 changed how tenancies work. Fixed terms ended and tenancies went periodic. Section 21 went. Rental bidding stopped. Rent increases moved to once a year through a formal process. Big changes, but once you understood them, the day-to-day running of a property carried on much as it had.
The database is a different kind of change. It does not alter your tenancy. It adds an ongoing administrative duty that did not exist before, and it does not end once you have registered.
Every entry has to keep matching reality. When something changes, you have 28 days to update it. A renewed gas safety record. A new EICR. A fresh EPC, or a MEES exemption. A change in the rent. A change in how many people are living there.
Think about how often at least one of those happens. A landlord with three properties, annual gas checks, EICRs on a five-year cycle and one rent review a year is looking at several 28-day deadlines every twelve months, each starting on a day nobody wrote down. On top of that, the registration itself renews annually.
Worth being straight about it. This is real work and it is permanent work. Entirely manageable, but not nothing, and the landlords who find next summer easiest will be the ones who treat it as a job rather than a form.
What it costs
£65 per property, per year. It should be deductible as a business expense against your rental income, so speak to your accountant about how it lands for you.
The renewal date is worth understanding. The fee renews on the anniversary of your first property going onto the database, and across a portfolio everything renews on that same single date. Properties you add later are charged pro rata for their first year, then fall in line with the rest.
Who can do what
Registering is your job, and the regulations are specific about it. The landlord registers. A letting agent cannot do it for you. There are narrow exceptions covering power of attorney, personal representatives and a handful of other situations, and that is the extent of it.
What an agent can do is everything around it. Hold the documents. Track the renewal dates. Supply the information when you need it. And let you know, as it happens, when something has changed that the database needs to be told about.
Which means your service level decides how much of this you carry yourself.
On tenant find, all of it is yours. On rent collection, we handle the money and the chasing, and the compliance documents and the deadlines stay with you. On full management, our in-house team holds the paperwork, watches the dates, and tells you when the database needs to know something.
What full management does with this
Our lettings and property management teams are in-house, in the same office, looking after hundreds of homes across Bracknell, Wokingham and the wider Berkshire area. The repairs themselves go out to trusted local tradespeople, because they are the ones who do the work properly. Everything around them stays with us.
So for every managed property we already hold the gas safety record, the EICR and the EPC, and we already track each renewal ahead of its date. When a certificate is renewed, we know, because we arranged it. When the rent changes, we know, because we handled the review. When a tenant moves in or out, we know.
That is exactly the information the database asks for, in one place, already current.
We cannot press submit for you. What we can do is make sure that when you do, everything you need is already in front of you, and that the next change comes to you as a message from us rather than a surprise eleven months later.
Start now. Register in the new year.
You can register from 15 December, a full three months before you are required to. That head start is the whole opportunity here, and getting ready for it starts today.
Gathering takes far longer than entering. Gas safety records, EICRs, EPCs, tenancy agreements, freeholder and managing agent details, for every property you let. If those are spread across a few years, a couple of email accounts and a drawer, give yourself more time than you think you need.
Then register in January and February. Get Christmas out of the way, and use the weeks after the decorations come down, when the evenings are dark and the diary has not yet filled with spring and summer plans. It is the easiest stretch of the year to sit down and work through a list properly.
Be firm about that window, because of what happens if you are not. Reach April with it still undone and June stops being a date on a list and becomes a deadline, with every other landlord in the Southeast reaching for the same service at the same time.
Gather now. Register in the new year. Finished long before June.
Know what it means for your properties
If you want a clear view of what registration will involve for the homes you let, or you are wondering whether your current arrangement leaves you holding more of this than you want to, come and talk it through.
Book a landlord consultation
Or request a local lettings market update from our team.