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Correction to Issue #26: the landlord register and exempt accommodation

Correction: the PRS register and supported exempt accommodation

Issue #26, published earlier today, said it was unclear whether supported exempt accommodation falls within the new national landlord register. It advised providers to assume they were in scope, prepare to register and pay the fee. That was wrong, and the advice should not be followed.

The draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026 deal with the point expressly. Regulation 3 amends section 63 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 so that, for the database, a relevant tenancy excludes any tenancy of supported exempt accommodation as defined in section 12 of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023. MHCLG's official guidance confirms that landlords of supported exempt accommodation will not need to register through the service. The Regulations were published a week before we went to press, and we should have read them first. legislationpropertymark

The corrected item and Deep Dive follow. Our full briefing paper, Off the Register, On the Hook, is available to paid subscribers.

3. Paid PRS Landlord Register Confirmed for December 2026. Genuine Exempt Accommodation Excluded

The "Register your rental property" service will charge £65 per property per year, renewed annually. It starts in the West Midlands on 15 December 2026, and all actively let properties must be registered by 14 November 2027. The draft Regulations, laid on 9 September, take tenancies of supported exempt accommodation out of the register altogether. devonshires

The exclusion is conditional. It depends on the section 12 definition, and so on the support being real. A provider that fails the support test loses its exempt rent and becomes an unregistered landlord, exposed to penalties and a bar on most possession claims. Providers should document a section 12 determination for every assured tenancy and should not register defensively. The Regulations remain subject to parliamentary approval.

Source: legislation.gov.uk · MHCLG · Devonshires

Deep Dive 1: The PRS Landlord Register. Excluded, If You Can Prove It

When the national landlord register opens in December, supported exempt accommodation will not be asked to sign up. It will be asked something harder: whether it is entitled not to. The draft Regulations take supported exempt accommodation out of the register by name. That exclusion is not a sector exemption. It is a status held tenancy by tenancy, and it turns on the three words that have decided this sector's income for two decades: care, support or supervision.

Who was ever in scope

The carve-out has to be read against the perimeter the Act already draws. Under section 63, a residential landlord is the landlord under a relevant tenancy of an English dwelling that is not social housing. A relevant tenancy is an assured tenancy under the Housing Act 1988 or a regulated tenancy under the Rent Act 1977. legislation

  • Genuine licences were never in.
  • Registered providers' social housing stock was never in.
  • Charities, CICs and voluntary organisations letting on assured tenancies are the ones the carve-out works for. For them it is the difference between an annual per-unit compliance regime and no register obligation at all.

The usual caveat applies: the label on the agreement does not decide whether it is a licence. A "licence" that is in substance a tenancy will ordinarily be an assured tenancy, and the register question then turns on section 12.

The definition is not the one you think

The Housing Benefit regime rests on Schedule 3 paragraph 4(10) of the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Consequential Provisions) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006/217), not the main HB Regulations. The register carve-out does not cite it. It cites section 12 of SHROA 2023, a free-standing definition that reproduces the benefit wording with differences that matter.

Section 12 asks whether care, support or supervision is provided to a person resident in the accommodation. Alongside that limb it adds separate categories for managed properties, refuges and local authority hostels. Three consequences follow: legislation

  • No benefit claim is needed. Register status is a property of the accommodation, not of anyone's benefit entitlement. An HB award at the exempt rate is good evidence of that status, but it binds neither a council enforcement officer nor a county court.
  • The unit of assessment is open. Nobody has yet had to decide how a mixed house, with some residents supported and some not, should be treated.
  • "Voluntary organisation" is undefined. SHROA uses the term without defining it, which will matter for CICs.

One question, three forums

There is no case law on section 12. The obvious route to interpreting it runs through the benefit authorities:

  • the Turnbull line (CH/150/2007, CH/4432/2006, CH/200/2009, R(H) 4/09), which requires support that is more than minimal, connected to the accommodation and actually delivered;
  • Bristol City Council v AW and its "real difference" test.

Until now, failing those tests cost the exempt rent. Once the Regulations take effect, the same finding also decides two further things.

The first is the register. An in-scope landlord that has not registered faces civil penalties of up to £7,000, rising to £40,000 for continued or repeated breach. Continuing breach becomes a criminal offence, and where a company commits it with an officer's consent, connivance or neglect, the officer is liable as well as the company. legislation

The second is possession. No possession order may be made while the landlord is in breach of its registration duty, unless the claim is brought on Ground 7A or Ground 14. Tenants' representatives will learn that point quickly. legislation

Do not register defensively

At £65 a unit, registering everything "to be safe" is tempting. It is a mistake:

  • An entry tells a database every council can see that the tenancy is not supported exempt accommodation. That is an admission an HB authority can put to you at tribunal.
  • It buys nothing. If the support is real, registration was unnecessary. If it is not, the problem is the support, not the paperwork.

Register units that genuinely fall outside section 12, such as unsupported move-on or general-needs lets, and nothing else.

What the register cannot see

For local authorities, the register will map the private rented sector around supported housing and leave supported housing itself blank. That blank is informative: an address with no entry and no exempt-rate claims is the obvious first visit.

There is also a timing gap. The carve-out hands supported exempt accommodation to SHROA licensing, which uses the same definition but is unlikely to come into force before mid-2027. Until then, West Midlands supported exempt accommodation sits outside the register and outside any licence. homeless

December 2026 adds no form for genuine providers. It adds a third forum in which the sector's oldest question will be asked: is the support real? Providers that can prove it are off the register. Providers that cannot are on the hook.

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