How to register on the landlord portal and renew your registration

If you let a property in England, you will have to register yourself and every property you let on the landlord portal — officially the Register your rental property service, the front end of the Private Rented Sector Database created by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. According to MHCLG's guidance for landlords, published on 29 October 2026, registration opens on a regional basis from 15 December 2026, costs £65 per property per year, and renews annually. The registration form itself takes minutes. The parts that catch people out are the 28-day window for uploading your certificates and the fact that every property you own ends up sharing a single renewal date.

TL;DR

Landlords in England must create a landlord entry and a separate entry for each let property on the Register your rental property service, with registration opening region by region from 15 December 2026 (West Midlands first) and the last regional window closing on 14 November 2027, per MHCLG guidance. The fee is £65 per property per year, with no charge for your landlord registration or for updating records, and the fee is pro-rated during the rollout so you are not charged for any days before 15 November 2027. You can submit a property entry with basic details and then supply the tenancy and safety information — gas safety record, EICR, EPC, licence numbers, rent — within 28 days, but if you miss that window the property entry can be deactivated. All your properties take the same renewal date, set by your first property registration, and you must keep entries up to date within 28 days of anything changing or expiring. MHCLG guidance states penalties of up to £7,000 for failing to register and up to £40,000 for knowingly or recklessly giving false information or for continuing or repeated breaches.

Registration is not the hard part. Keeping the entry active is.

What is the landlord portal, and who has to register?

The landlord portal is the public-facing service for the database established by Chapter 3 of Part 2 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025. It holds two kinds of record: a landlord entry for you, and a dwelling entry for each property you let. Both have to be "active" — the statutory term — for you to be compliant, and section 82 of the Act puts the duty to ensure that squarely on the landlord, not the agent.

MHCLG guidance is clear that any private landlord renting out a property in England occupied under an assured or regulated tenancy must register, including organisations acting as landlords. Joint landlords each need their own landlord entry; one of them registers the property and invites the others to it. There is a narrow exemption: regulation 3 of the draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026 carves out tenancies of supported exempt accommodation within the meaning of section 12 of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023.

The thesis of this article, which you will not find on the pages summarising the government's press release: the portal is best understood not as a register but as a standing, self-declared compliance audit. You are handing your council a dated list of your CP12, EICR, EPC, licence status and rent — and then undertaking to keep it current. That is a different habit from filing a certificate in a drawer.

When do I have to register on the landlord portal?

Registration opens region by region. Each region gets a three-month window, and you must have registered your occupied properties in that region by the window's end date. MHCLG's guidance sets out the schedule, and the dates match the commencement table in the draft regulations.

You can register early. MHCLG guidance confirms you may register properties before their region's window opens, which matters if you own across regions — a landlord with terraces in Blackburn and one flat in Wolverhampton can do the lot in one sitting in December 2026 rather than coming back in May. During the rollout, from 15 December 2026 to 14 November 2027, you only need to register properties that are currently let or that become let in that period; registering empty properties before marketing them is a later requirement and MHCLG has said it will update its guidance before that takes effect.

How do I register on the landlord portal, step by step?

1. Set up or sign in with GOV.UK One Login. Registration runs through One Login, with the option to verify your identity. If you have no digital access, MHCLG guidance confirms a paper-based application is available.
2. Create your landlord entry. An individual landlord gives name, date of birth, residential address, telephone number and email address — that list is set out in Schedule 2 to the draft regulations. Organisations give entity type, a non-PO-Box address, a nominated contact and a Companies House or charity number where applicable. There is no fee for the landlord entry.
3. Register each property. Provide the address, ownership and dwelling type, number of bedrooms, whether it is currently let, a correspondence address in England or Wales, and contact details for any managing agent, superior landlord or freeholder. Pay the fee and you are issued a rental property number.
4. Add the tenancy and safety information. Gas safety record and its issue date (if there is a gas supply), EICR and expiry date, the EPC, any HMO, additional or selective licence numbers, number of occupants and households, rent and payment frequency, and whether the property is let furnished. You can do this at the same time, or within 28 days of making the property entry.
5. Diarise your renewal date and your certificate expiries. Both now sit on the same system. One renewal date covers all your properties; every certificate expiry triggers a 28-day duty to update the record.

One point worth flagging for anyone who uses an agent: you cannot hand the whole job over. Regulation 4(2) of the draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026 restricts who may make an entry to the landlord (or a defined third party such as an attorney, personal representative or trustee in bankruptcy). A letting agent or property manager can supply and update the tenancy and health-and-safety information under regulations 4(5) and 7(2) — but you start the registration, and MHCLG guidance states you remain responsible for the record being completed within 28 days even where you have delegated it.

What does registration cost, and what will I pay in the first year?

MHCLG guidance confirms the annual service fee is £65 per property, not subject to VAT. You are not charged for your landlord registration or for making updates. The guidance also notes the fee is tax-deductible and points landlords to the relevant HMRC guidance at tax-return time — worth adding to the running cost list alongside your other deductible letting expenses.

During the rollout the fee is pro-rated, because landlords in the West Midlands are called forward eleven months before those in the South West. MHCLG's formula disregards every day before 15 November 2027, the date from which all landlords must be registered. Its own worked examples: a property registered on 15 December 2026 attracts a first-year fee of £5.34, and one registered on 25 June 2027 attracts £39.60.

So take a landlord with five terraces — four in Blackburn (North West) and one in Wolverhampton (West Midlands). The Wolverhampton property must be registered by 14 March 2027; the Blackburn four by 14 August 2027. If all five go on the service on 15 December 2026, the first-year bill is five times £5.34 — £26.70 — and from the first renewal the cost settles at £325 a year for the portfolio. Registering early in the rollout does not cost you more, because the pro-rating removes the pre-15-November-2027 days either way. It does mean one trip through the paperwork instead of two.

How does renewal work, and when is my renewal date?

This is the detail most landlords get wrong on first reading. Your renewal date is not set per property. MHCLG guidance states that the renewal date for every property you register is one year from the date you registered your first property — so a second property registered two months later inherits the first property's renewal date, not its own anniversary.

That mirrors regulation 10 of the draft regulations: an entry's renewal date is the last day of the 12-month period beginning with the date it was first made, and where a landlord already has an active dwelling entry, any further entry takes the same renewal date. Regulation 10(1) is blunt about the consequence — an active entry becomes inactive the day after the renewal date unless it is renewed on or before that date, and renewal of a property entry requires the fee to be paid.

The practical read: one diary entry covers renewal for the whole portfolio, which is genuinely helpful for a landlord with several properties. The flip side is that one missed payment date puts every property entry out of action at once — and an inactive entry is the trigger for the possession restriction described below.

Why is the 28-day rule the part that catches landlords out?

From the moment you register, you owe a continuing duty to keep the record current. Regulations 8 and 9 of the draft regulations require landlord and dwelling entries to be updated within 28 days of any information or document in them becoming out of date, and MHCLG guidance repeats that in plain terms: update anything that changes or expires within 28 days.

Think about what that means in practice. Your gas safety record is renewed every 12 months, so every CP12 now carries a second deadline — get the new one on the register within 28 days of the old one going out of date. The same applies to an EICR on its five-year cycle, to a new EPC, to a renewed selective or HMO licence, to a rent change following a section 13 notice, and to a property going from let to empty. A landlord with four properties and a mix of gas, electrical and licence dates is realistically looking at a handful of register updates a year, none of them difficult and all of them easy to forget.

There is also a trap at the front end. Regulation 11(2)(a) provides that a property entry becomes inactive if the Part 2 tenancy and safety information is not supplied within 28 days of the entry being made. Registering the address and paying £65 does not finish the job; the entry you created in week one quietly switches off in week five if the certificates never arrive.

What happens if I don't register?

Two separate consequences, and the second one is the one that bites.

First, civil penalties. MHCLG guidance states landlords may be subject to penalties of up to £7,000 for failing to register themselves and their property, and up to £40,000 for knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information to the service, or for continuing or repeated breaches of certain requirements. Your local authority is the enforcing body. From 15 December 2026, tenants can also apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a rent repayment order in the more serious cases, under section 98 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 — though MHCLG guidance notes this only becomes available once the registration period for the property's area has opened. If you want the wider picture on how councils set penalty levels, see our guide to landlord fines and civil penalties.

Second, possession. Section 90 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 prevents the court from making a possession order where the landlord does not have an active landlord entry and an active dwelling entry, with the exception of the anti-social behaviour grounds (7A and 14). In a world without section 21 and with contested section 8 possession claims already slow, an inactive register entry is not a fine you can shrug off — it is a bar on the courtroom door. That is the real reason to treat the renewal date as a hard deadline rather than an administrative nicety.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my letting agent register my properties on the landlord portal for me?

No. Under regulation 4(2) of the draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026, entries may only be made by the landlord or by a defined third party such as an attorney or personal representative. MHCLG guidance confirms a letting agent or property manager can supply and update the tenancy and health-and-safety information once you have started the registration, but the legal responsibility stays with you.

Do both joint landlords need to register separately?

Yes. MHCLG guidance states that where a property is let by joint landlords, each landlord must register, with one of them registering the property and inviting the others to that property registration. The guidance also notes that if you own part of a rental property and are entitled to possession of it, you must register as a joint landlord even if you are not named on the tenancy agreement.

How much is the landlord portal fee, and is it per property or per landlord?

MHCLG guidance confirms the fee is £65 per property per year, with no VAT, payable when you register each property and then annually to keep it on the service. There is no fee for your landlord registration and no charge for updating your records.

What documents do I need before I register a property?

Schedule 3 to the draft regulations lists the tenancy and safety information required: the gas safety record and its issue date where there is a gas supply, the EICR (or an appropriate electrical installation certificate) and its expiry date, the EPC and any registered MEES exemption, HMO, additional or selective licence numbers, occupant and household numbers, and rent and furnishing details. Having that pack to hand before you start turns the registration into a ten-minute job.

What happens if I miss my annual renewal date?

Regulation 10(1) of the draft regulations provides that an active entry becomes inactive the day after the renewal date unless it is renewed on or before that date. Because all your properties share one renewal date, a single missed payment affects the whole portfolio — and an inactive entry engages the section 90 restriction on obtaining a possession order.

Keeping one renewal date and a dozen certificate expiries in the same place

The landlord portal turns your compliance paperwork into a live record with its own deadlines: one shared renewal date for the whole portfolio, a 28-day window to finish each property entry, and another 28 days every time a CP12, EICR, EPC or licence falls out of date. None of that is hard — it is just one more set of dates to miss. LandlordReady keeps a small landlord's legal obligations and deadlines in one place: gas safety, EPC, deposit protection and the Renters' Rights Act duties, including the certificate expiries that now double as register-update deadlines. If your compliance dates currently live in a spreadsheet and a shoebox, this is the point at which that stops being good enough.