Registration opens in October 2026. It is free, and it does not ask for a single safety certificate. The licence that follows is a different matter, and the fire risk assessment you already need is a third thing again.
Most of the confusion in Pembrokeshire right now comes from treating these as one scheme. They are not, and they arrive years apart.
Self-catering accommodation is not a private dwelling. The Fire Safety Order has applied to it for two decades, and since 1 October 2023 you must record the assessment in full, whatever the size of the business. This one is not coming, it is here, and it is the only one of the three that is already enforceable against you.
Run by the Welsh Revenue Authority. Free. A six-month window to get on it. It asks who you are, what you let, where it is, how many it sleeps and when you are open for business.
You must be registered by this date, whether or not your council introduces a visitor levy. After that, taking bookings unregistered is an offence and carries financial penalties.
The register exists largely so the visitor levy can work. Whether Pembrokeshire charges it is a decision for the county council, but you have to be on the register either way.
A separate, heavier regime, expected to begin with self-contained self-catering accommodation. As drafted it is the one that will want a fire risk assessment, gas and electrical safety certificates, carbon monoxide alarms and public liability insurance. The working expectation is the end of the decade, and the timetable is not fixed.
This is the whole of it. There is no inspection, no fee, and no document to upload.
No fire risk assessment. No gas certificate. No electrical certificate. If a page tells you the register requires those, it has confused the register with the licence, or it is selling you something.
This is the one worth preparing for, and it is the reason a bit of quiet work now is cheaper than a rush later.
Not just the document. A licensing regime asks you to have done the things the document told you to do, which is a different exercise from having a PDF in a drawer.
An annual gas safety record for any gas appliance, and an electrical installation condition report. Most Pembrokeshire owners letting through an agency already hold both.
Any room with a fuel-burning appliance. Wood burners are the common one here, and they are also the commonest thing we write up.
Which most insurers will want a current fire risk assessment to sit behind anyway.
None of this is exotic. Almost every owner who has had a proper assessment done already meets most of it. The ones who will struggle are the ones who have relied on a downloaded template and never had anyone look at the building.
Getting on the register will take you twenty minutes and cost nothing. It is not the thing to worry about.
The thing to sort out is the assessment you have needed all along, because it is the one that is already law, the one Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service can act on today, and the one the licence will ask to see when it arrives. Doing it once, properly, covers all three.
No. Registration with the Welsh Revenue Authority is free and asks for contact details, a trading name, the address, the type of accommodation, how many guests it sleeps and when you operate. It does not ask for a fire risk assessment, a gas certificate or an electrical certificate. If you have been told otherwise, you have been told wrong. What is true is that you almost certainly need a fire risk assessment anyway, for a different reason, and have done for years.
Because two separate schemes are being run together in people's heads. The register is first, it is free, and it is essentially a headcount so the visitor levy can work. The licensing scheme is a later, heavier thing, and that one is expected to require a fire risk assessment, gas and electrical certificates, carbon monoxide alarms and public liability insurance. Conflating them makes for a more frightening headline.
Registration opens in October 2026 and there is a six-month window. You must be registered by 31 March 2027, and that applies whether or not Pembrokeshire County Council decides to introduce a visitor levy.
The register applies to anyone taking bookings for overnight stays of 31 nights or less. There is no minimum number of weeks. A cottage let for six weeks in the summer is in scope, and so is a shepherd's hut, a static caravan, a room in your own house and a boat.
It becomes an offence to take bookings without being registered, and financial penalties apply. The practical risk is more mundane: the booking platforms will almost certainly ask for your registration number, in the same way they now ask Scottish hosts for a licence number.
If you let to paying guests, yes, and you have done since long before any of this was announced. Self-catering accommodation is not a private dwelling, so it falls under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Since 1 October 2023 you must also record the assessment in full, whatever the size of the business.
What we look at in self-catering accommodation, and what usually needs changing.
What the platforms ask for and how a short let differs from a tenancy.
What changed on 1 October 2023 and what you now have to record.
Tell us the building and we will give you a price on the phone. Most assessments are booked within the week.