In the current climate of redressing the perceived imbalance between landlords and tenants, the government is seeking views on opening up access to the database of rogue landlords to tenants and prospective tenants. The intention is to further empower tenants by providing information to allow them to make informed decisions about which landlords to rent from.

On 6 April 2018 the government introduced a database of rogue landlords, together with a raft of other enforcement tools, to assist local authorities in their fight against criminal landlords. The aim of the database was to allow local authorities to share information about criminal landlords and assist coordination where those landlords were operating across several different authority areas.

However, in October 2018 the Prime Minister committed to opening up access to the database to tenants. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now (July 2019) issued a consultation on this proposal.  

Currently the database is very limited in scope and content and only includes the very worst offenders. Local authorities are only under a duty to make an entry onto the database where a landlord receives a banning order. They also have the option (but not the obligation) to make an entry where a landlord has been convicted of a banning order offence or has received two or more civil penalties for such an offence within a 12-month period. To date, the database includes only ten landlords.
Equally, access to the database is very narrow.  Only local authorities may access the full details of the database, although in certain circumstances the Secretary of State may disclose anonymised data from it.

The government’s consultation seeks views on both widening the scope of the database as well as access to it.