A government department is asking landlords to share their data in a bid to improve services.

The Valuation Office Agency says it depends on “the goodwill and trust of landlords, letting agents and tenants” who provide details of rent levels being paid in the private rented sector, and claims some 500,000 such records are provided voluntarily each year. 

This has in fact been happening for the past eight years but the government is now making a renewed attempt to get new landlords to contribute.

On a tweet it leads landlords to part of the VOA website which explains that this voluntary submission of data is then used to set Local Housing Allowance and Housing Benefit which help private tenants with their rent, to produce the official Private Rental Market statistics publicised by the government, and to calculate the private rental element of the Consumer Price and Retail Price indices, which are well known measures of price inflation which affect every citizen in the UK.

The basic information it requires includes the full rental property address, the type of property, number of bedrooms and living rooms, the date of the start of the tenancy, and the level of rent.

“Individual properties and the source of the rental information remain confidential. Data is held on a secure database. VOA Rent Officers are registered with the Information Commissioner and comply with the Data Protection Act 1998” says the department.

There are two templates it is offering to contributors – VOA lettings information form for room rents and VOA lettings information form for self-contained properties.