The Minister of Home Affairs updated MPs on progress to help drive down crippling housing costs, saying more consultation would come next month.

Dwayne Robinson, the Shadow Minister of Home and Community Affairs, asked Alexa Lightbourne on the status of the draft Bill the Landlord and Tenant Act 2025, since “consultation concluded October 31”.

He asked for a timeline for reforms to come before the House of Assembly.

Ms Lightbourne responded that a next phase of consultation will be arrived at by June, with reforms revised thereafter.

She said she had provided a comprehensive update in her ministerial remarks of work since the end of the October consultation.

Ms Lightbourne said in the statement: “Since the close of the consultation, the ministry has done three things.

“First, every submission has been read and assessed. The drafters of this Bill, in partnership with the Attorney-General’s Chambers, have spent the months since the consultation working through each substantive issue.

“Second, the policy framework underpinning the Bill has been developed in greater depth. The Cabinet has recently been invited to consider the way that rents are administered.

“The framework that will be reflected in the upcoming consultative Bill will now distinguish clearly between the market setting the initial rent at the point of letting, and the law governing how that rent changes once a tenant is in residence.

“That distinction is foundational. It preserves the freedom of contract that landlords expect, while giving tenants the protection from arbitrary increases that families need …

“Under the new framework, every residential rental property in Bermuda, regardless of its rental value, will be registered. Standards will apply universally, including standards for the quality of upkeep that tenants are entitled to expect …

“Third, the ministry has aligned this reform with the intentions outlined in the Affordable Bermuda Agenda published in September 2025. The updated Bill aims to protect what exists, ensure fair and equitable treatment in the existing market, and provide the data infrastructure that current and future strategies require.”

She reiterated that the Government had committed to two reforms.

The first was the modernisation of the broader tenancy framework, replacing the Landlord and Tenant Act 1974 and the Rent Increases (Domestic Premises) Control Act 1978 with a “single, coherent statute fit for the realities of housing in Bermuda today”.

The second was the establishment of a National Housing Registry, which Ms Lightbourne described as “the institutional architecture that will give the Government, landlords and tenants a clear and current picture of the rental market for the first time in our country’s history”.

She said: “These reforms are interrelated and they are being advanced in parallel and connected with the broader and anticipated Landlord and Tenant Act 2026.”