Draft Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026
House of Commons · General Committees · 22 Jun 2026 · 30 speeches · Official Report
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chair: †Paula Barker
† Amos, Gideon (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
† Cocking, Lewis (Broxbourne) (Con)
† Costigan, Deirdre (Lord Commissioner of His Majesty's Treasury)
† Curtis, Chris (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)
† Edwards, Lauren (Rochester and Strood) (Lab)
Farron, Tim (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
† Holmes, Paul (Hamble Valley) (Con)
† Hurley, Patrick (Southport) (Lab)
† Jermy, Terry (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
† McAllister, Douglas (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
† Mitchell, Sir Andrew (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
† Pennycook, Matthew (Minister for Housing and Planning)
† Riddell-Carpenter, Jenny (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)
† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
† Toale, Jessica (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
† Uppal, Harpreet (Huddersfield) (Lab)
† Williams, David (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Jack Edwards, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
First Delegated Legislation Committee
Monday 22 June 2026
[Paula Barker in the Chair ]
Draft Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026
I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Private Landlord Redress Schemes (Approval and Designation) Regulations 2026. It is an absolute pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker-it is my first time doing so, which makes it all the more special. In our manifesto, we promised to overhaul the regulation of an insecure and unjust private rented sector. Our transformative Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 27 October last year, delivered on that commitment. In the implementation road map, published on 13 November 2025, the Government set out our intention to switch on the provisions of the Act in three distinct phases. As the first phase, on 1 May 2026, we commenced the new tenancy regime. As a result, section 21 no-fault evictions were finally abolished, all fixed-term tenancies transitioned to periodic tenancies; rent increases were limited to once a year, with new rights to challenge unreasonable rent hikes; rental bidding wars were banned; demands for large amounts of rent in advance were prohibited; discrimination against renters who have children or receive benefits was banned, and the right to request permission for a pet was introduced. In the second phase of our reforms, we will introduce our innovative database of private rented sector properties and establish a landlord ombudsman for the PRS to improve dispute resolution between tenants and landlords and avoid costly court proceedings. These regulations concern the...
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. On this hot afternoon, the Committee will be pleased to hear that, having debated a lot of the detail underlying the Minister’s proposals in Committee for the Renters’ Rights Act, the Opposition will not be seeking to trot out lengthy speeches or a long list of questions-although I hear that one or two Back Benchers may have come with 90 minutes of material prepared. In Committee, we debated at great length the proportionality of the measures that are now fleshed out in more detail in this set of proposals, not least because, while there are some egregious examples of poor landlords, the private rented sector still enjoys the highest resident or tenant satisfaction of any form of housing tenure. It remains the view of the Opposition that some of the measures set out in the 2025 Act go well beyond what is proportionate to the experience of the vast majority of private tenants. This is a sector that is absolutely critical to providing housing, especially for younger people who are looking for more flexible housing options as they develop their working lives. The Minister has set out a little bit of his thinking. I think it would be helpful if he could touch briefly, in summing up, on how the Government propose to ensure that that level of proportionality will be maintained when this scheme translates from a set of legislative proposals into reality. In particular, could he address how we will ensure that the costs to...
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. On the parent Act to this instrument, the Liberal Democrats campaigned in favour of ending no-fault evictions, and we were pleased to support the Bill to bring that about and bring those to an end. We support the principle of the landlord redress scheme, although we did push for the Government to go further on protecting renters and on the private rental database, including more records of landlords, on rent smoothing and so on. We believe that the redress system should extend to providing redress against excessive rent increases above and beyond the pertaining Bank of England rate of interest. That is in our rent-smoothing proposals. None the less, we support the draft enabling regulations for the redress scheme. Will the Minister say a little more about the kinds of landlords that the draft regulations will apply to, which he said will come out in due course? Is the metric to do with the scale of the landlord or a type of landlord? It would be helpful to know a little more on that front. Otherwise, we are willing to support the statutory instrument.
I thank both the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, and the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, for those questions. I will seek to answer them each in turn, beginning with giving the Committee a sense of when things will change for landlords and for tenants. I made it clear that the draft regulations set out the framework for the redress scheme to come; they do not themselves approve or designate a specific scheme. Much of the detail will follow in regulations. The draft regulations do not themselves create an immediate live complaints route for private tenants and they do not yet require private landlords to join a scheme. As I said, further regulations will be needed before membership becomes mandatory, once the service is ready to go live. The shadow Minister asked about fees. As we debated at length in the Bill Committee, landlords will be required to pay for the scheme. That is in line with established practice across the sector. The draft regulations require a scheme to include provision for fees, but they do not themselves set fee amounts. The intention is that the scheme document will outline the approach to setting and calculating membership, while details of the fees will be published elsewhere. That will allow administration and membership fees to be managed proportionately, without requiring the scheme to be amended whenever fee levels change. The Secretary of State, however-this is the...
Committee rose .