Registration is mandatory, it opens on 15 December 2026, and your region now has a deadline. This is the preparation guide — what the register will ask you for, document by document, and which of those you can put right now rather than in a hurry later.
You’ll need to register every property with your contact details, property details, and three certificates — Gas Safety, EICR and EPC. Registration is not open yet — it opens on 15 December 2026 in the West Midlands and reaches the last region in August 2027 — but everything on that list is worth assembling now, and you now have a deadline to work back from. The fee is £65 per property, per year.
This page is about the registration itself — what you will have to produce and how to be ready. If you want the wider picture of what the database is and where it sits in the Act’s phasing, that is our PRS Database explainer. If you want to know where your own area stands, that is the per-authority checker, which covers all 294 English local authorities.
This guide is part of our landlord compliance series — sourced guides to the biggest deadlines and duties facing English landlords right now.
The implementation roadmap sets out what regulations will require, at minimum, for each private rented property. It falls into three groups.
Your contact details as landlord — including capturing the relevant information from all joint landlords, not just whoever usually handles the letting.
Property details — the full address, the type of property, the number of bedrooms, the number of households or residents, and whether the property is occupied and whether it is furnished.
Safety information — Gas, Electrical and Energy Performance Certificates.
Two of those three groups are things you already know. The third is the one that takes time, because it depends on documents that expire, that sit with a managing agent, or that were never obtained.
Gas Safety Certificate (CP12). Required annually where there are gas appliances, from a Gas Safe registered engineer. The usual problem is not absence but continuity: you need the current one, and if you are asked to demonstrate compliance you want the run of them, not just the latest. If a managing agent has been arranging these, ask for the full set now rather than at registration.
Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR). Required for private rented properties in England, renewed at least every five years, and the report must be satisfactory. This is the one small landlords most often lack, because the requirement is newer than gas safety and a five-year cycle is easy to lose track of. If yours is unsatisfactory or approaching five years old, that is a job to book, not a document to find.
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). Valid for ten years. Worth checking the expiry date rather than assuming, and worth reading in light of the separate energy-efficiency deadline: the minimum standard rises to EPC C equivalent on 1 October 2030, and there is a dated route to compliance that closes on 1 October 2029. If you are going to touch the EPC anyway, our EPC C by 2030 guide explains why the timing matters.
If you own jointly — a couple, siblings, a family arrangement — establish now who holds what. The roadmap is explicit that information will be captured from all joint landlords, and “my brother has the certificates” is not a position you want to be resolving against a deadline.
Enforcement does not only bite at the point of letting. Councils will be able to act against a landlord who fails to register, and separately against anyone who markets a private rented property where the landlord is not registered.
Two practical consequences. First, the moment your region’s rollout is live, an advert is itself an exposure — you cannot advertise now and register when a tenant is found. Second, if you use a letting agent, this is a shared problem: the agent placing the advert is exposed too, which means agents will start requiring proof of registration before they list. Being unregistered will make you unlettable through an agent before it makes you liable to a council.
The tiers are real: up to £7,000 for initial breaches, and up to £40,000 — or criminal prosecution instead — for serious, persistent or repeat breaches. Providing fraudulent information to the database sits in the higher tier.
Before the fines, though, the consequence that should drive your timetable: a landlord in breach of the duty to register cannot obtain a possession order except where possession is sought on ground 7A or ground 14 — the tenant anti-social behaviour grounds. Rent arrears, selling, moving back in: none of them are available to you while the property is unregistered. A fine is a cost; losing access to possession proceedings is a different order of problem, and it is the reason registering on time is not an administrative nicety.
But there is a distinction worth holding onto, because it is the same one that matters everywhere in this Act. A tier is the statutory ceiling. A starting point is the figure GOV.UK’s statutory guidance tells councils to begin from before adjusting for aggravating and mitigating factors. For the written-statement duties, guidance publishes both — a £4,000 starting point inside a £7,000 ceiling.
For database offences, the guidance does not yet publish starting points at all. They are listed as forthcoming. So anyone quoting you an expected fine for failing to register is quoting the ceiling and calling it a forecast. What is honestly knowable today is the maximum, not the likely.
Your region’s date: settled. The schedule is published by region, opening 15 December 2026 in the West Midlands and closing with the South West on 14 November 2027. The PRS Database explainer carries the full nine-region table. Note the deadline follows the property’s location, not yours.
Your individual council’s date: still not a thing. The schedule is regional, not per-authority, so the right question is which region your property sits in. We have not yet mapped all 294 English local authorities onto their regions, so our per-authority pages point you at the regional table rather than asserting a date we have not verified for your council.
The fee: settled. £65 per property, per year. One caveat worth carrying: the draft regulations do not set it — they leave the amount to the Database operator by reference to its costs, under section 81(4) of the Act. So it is the published service fee, not a statutory figure, and it can be revised without the Act changing.
The penalty starting points: still not published. As above — tiers yes, starting points no.
And the schedule is not yet law. The Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026 are a draft laid before Parliament under s.140(5) of the Act, awaiting approval by a resolution of each House. Registration of unoccupied properties, and the detail of the database’s public view, are both left to later legislation and later guidance. Dates can still move, and a guide that presents a laid draft as settled law is doing the same thing as one that invents a figure.
1. Build one folder per property. Address, property type, bedroom count, whether occupied and furnished, current tenant household size. Then the three certificates. That is the registration record set, and assembling it is the whole job.
2. Check every expiry date, not every document’s existence. Gas certificate within twelve months, EICR within five years and satisfactory, EPC within ten years. An expired document is the same problem as a missing one.
3. Book the EICR if yours is old, unsatisfactory or unknown. This is the long-lead item — it needs a qualified electrician, remedial work is common, and demand will rise sharply as regions go live.
4. Sort joint-landlord details now. Full contact information for every joint owner, and an agreement about who holds the records.
5. Talk to your agent about who registers what. The duty to register is the landlord’s; the marketing prohibition catches the advertiser. Both of you need to know which of you is doing what before the first advert after your region goes live.
6. Do not wait for your area’s date to start. Nothing on this list requires knowing the date, all of it is work you would do anyway to demonstrate compliance to a council, and the whole point of a phased rollout is that some regions get much less warning than others.
When do I have to register? Registration opens 15 December 2026 in the West Midlands, then a further region each month to August 2027. Your region gets a three-month window, and the last deadline nationally is 14 November 2027. The explainer has the full table. The regulations are a laid draft awaiting parliamentary approval, so dates can still move.
What will I have to provide? Your contact details as landlord including all joint landlords; property details — full address, property type, bedrooms, number of households or residents, whether occupied and furnished; and safety information — Gas, Electrical and Energy Performance Certificates.
How much will registration cost? £65 per property, per year — annual, not one-off, and per property rather than per landlord. The draft regulations leave the amount to the Database operator, so it is the published service fee rather than a statutory one.
What is the penalty for not registering? Up to £7,000 for an initial breach and up to £40,000, or criminal prosecution, for continuing or repeated breaches. GOV.UK’s statutory guidance has not yet published starting-point figures for database offences, so those are ceilings rather than expected fines.
Can I evict a tenant if I have not registered? Generally no. A landlord in breach of the duty to register cannot get a possession order except on ground 7A or ground 14, the tenant anti-social behaviour grounds. It is the most serious consequence of missing your deadline.
Can I advertise a property before I have registered it? No. Councils will be able to act against anyone marketing a private rented property where the landlord is not registered, as well as against the unregistered landlord.
My property is jointly owned. Do we both register? The roadmap states information will be captured from all joint landlords, so gather full contact details for every owner rather than assuming one registration covers the group.
Does my letting agent register for me? The duty sits with the landlord. Agents are exposed separately through the marketing prohibition, so agree in advance who is doing what.
UK Property Portal is written and published by Dan Woodcock, working independently from UK. It is a one-person operation — there is no newsroom and no research team behind it — and every figure, date and threshold on this page is sourced, attributed and dated to the document it comes from. Read the full editorial standard →
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