There aren’t many landlords who would defend rogue operators. Quite the opposite. Spend five minutes reading the comments on Landlord Today and you’ll quickly discover that most believe the minority who neglect their properties or exploit tenants damage the reputation of everyone else.

So, on the face of it, the proposal for a compulsory landlord database might well have been welcomed.

Instead, it was met with one overwhelming query.

“How will these bad landlords be driven out using the database, if they never register on it?” asked Simon Logan.

Perfectly reasonable question.

After all, the sort of landlord who already complies with licensing schemes, tax returns, EPC requirements, deposit protection, safety certificates and local authority rules is hardly likely to ignore another legal obligation. The rogue operator, by definition, is a little more devious than that.

Readers weren’t objecting to higher standards. They were questioning whether another register is the best way to achieve them.

Richard Bicknell wondered why another fee was inevitable when landlords would largely be entering information that government already possesses. Peter England suggested the obvious alternative: why not integrate the new database with existing systems instead of asking landlords to register yet again? Others pointed to selective licensing, the ICO register, deposit protection schemes and local authority records, asking whether the latest proposal risked duplicating information already sitting elsewhere in Whitehall.

That raises a bigger question than whether landlords relish the prospect of another form to complete.

In an era when governments champion digital transformation and joined-up public services, why does so much information still appear to live in separate silos?

The answer is, of course, more complicated than it first appears. Different organisations collect information for different legal purposes, under different powers and different data-sharing rules. Anyone who has wrestled with the Information Commissioner’s Office or UK data protection legislation knows that sharing information between departments is rarely as simple as pressing “send”.

But that complexity isn’t really a landlord’s problem.

If ministers want a more professional private rented sector, landlords might reasonably expect government to demonstrate the same professionalism: reducing duplication, simplifying administration and making better use of information it already holds before asking for more.

There were constructive ideas among the criticism too. Several readers argued that a single digital record could actually be beneficial if it replaced existing registrations rather than sitting alongside them. A genuine one-stop shop for compliance might reduce paperwork for responsible landlords while making life harder for those operating outside the rules.

That might even feel like proper reform.

What landlords fear is something different: another database, another registration, another fee and another layer of administration that the compliant majority dutifully complete while the people it is designed to catch continue operating in the shadows.

The success of the new database won’t be measured by how many good landlords sign up. Most probably will. It will be measured by whether it genuinely helps identify those who don’t.

I’ll leave the last word to Richard Le Frak who described the database as a ‘system that relies on bad actors self-reporting their own badness.

‘It’s a bit like installing a burglar alarm and expecting burglars to ring the doorbell first.’

Because if the answer to every regulatory challenge is another compulsory database, landlords may begin to wonder whether the problem isn’t a shortage of information at all.

It’s just that government has yet to find a way of joining up the information it already has.

Until next time,

N