England wants more landlord data...is Wales next?

Thoughts from Nik Lewis, Director of Operations at CPS Homes. Nik keeps a close eye on the changes affecting landlords across Cardiff and Wales - for more regular updates, advice and opinion, follow @thecardifflettingagent on Instagram.

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Landlords in England will soon need to pay £65 per property, per year, to register properties on a new Government database.

That immediately caught my attention because here in Wales, we’ve had Rent Smart Wales for years, but the cost is structured very differently. Registration is currently £60 per landlord for a new registration and £48 for a five-year renewal, rather than an annual fee for every individual property.

But for me, the more interesting difference is the amount of information being collected...

It’s not just about registration

England’s new system is set to collect much more detailed information about individual rental properties, including things such as the rent being charged, how many people are living there and property safety documentation.

And that got me wondering about what could eventually happen here in Wales. Rent Smart Wales already asks landlords for certain property information, but Welsh Government has also acknowledged that it doesn’t currently have enough live data showing what tenants are actually paying in rent. There have already been proposals around landlords or agents supplying rental information to Rent Smart Wales.

Could Wales follow?

So, looking at what’s now happening in England, could Welsh landlords eventually be asked to provide more information too? To be clear, this is my opinion rather than an announced change. But it raises some interesting questions.

If landlords were required to provide actual rent figures, would that help Government build a more accurate picture of the rental market?
Could occupancy information make it easier to identify properties that should be licensed as HMOs?
And could having safety certificates recorded centrally make compliance easier to monitor?

There could certainly be benefits to having better information about the private rented sector. But from a landlord’s perspective, there’s also the obvious question of whether it would simply mean more administration, more reporting and potentially more cost.

One to keep an eye on

What happens in England doesn’t automatically mean Wales will follow. Our rental legislation is already very different in many respects.

But I still think developments elsewhere are worth watching, particularly when Wales already has an established landlord registration system that could potentially be expanded in future.

Would you see more information being held by Rent Smart Wales as useful transparency, or simply another layer of admin for landlords?

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Let me know in the comments here.

27 September 2026

The information contained within this article was correct at the date of publishing and is not guaranteed to remain correct in the present day.

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