Scottish Landlord Register funding and consultation: FOI release

Information requested

Whether the Government or Civil Service has been tasked with spending any money on reforming or updating the use of the Scottish Landlord Register, since 2004? If so, when did they do this and for what purpose - not including any maintenance fees for the register such as domain hosting or general software support.

Response

The Scottish Landlord Register has developed gradually over time since it was set up in 2006 and goes through an iterative process of improvement. The 32 Local Authorities, who administer the registration scheme for their geographical areas, are consulted extensively in order to further facilitate their assessment, monitoring and enforcement processes.

Legislative changes require public consultation with stakeholders.

A consultation was released in 2008 about making the scheme more efficient. The findings are here:

https://webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20190119223752/https:/www2.gov.scot/Publications/2008/12/03103210/5

Another consultation was released in 2018 about legislative changes regarding Landlord Registration. These changes concerned the fee structure and expansion of the Prescribed Information, used for the Fit and Proper Person Test of landlords. The documentation and analysis can be found here:

Consultation on proposals for reviewing the current landlord registration fee structure and expanding the range of prescribed information applicants must provide to local authorities - Scottish Government consultations - Citizen Space

A Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) and an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) were also carried out for these legislative changes:

Private landlord registration: prescribed information and fees regulations - BRIA - gov.scot

Private landlord registration: prescribed information and fees regulations - EQIA - gov.scot

All changes have been made within the annual budget and income for the Landlord Register. The annual budget is approximately £300,000 per year since the financial year of 2021/2022. Since July 2019 a proportion of the application fee from landlord registration applications helps to fund the maintenance and further improvement of the Landlord Registration IT system. The proportion is approximately £2 from each application towards support costs and approximately £6 from each application towards maintenance. The total depends on the number of applications received. However, the approximate contributions from the income from the calendar years of 2022, 2023, and 2024 have been approximately £507,408 in total.

Some of the information you have requested (the consultations and impact assessments) is available from the links above. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.