How to Check a Property Factor in Scotland: Register + Tribunal Decisions

There are two official databases every Scottish homeowner should know how to use — and almost nobody explains how they connect. One tells you whether your factor is legally registered. The other tells you whether they've ever been found to have failed homeowners at the tribunal. This guide walks you through both, and how to jump from one to the other using a single number.

Note: Compare Factors is not the government register and is not affiliated with the Scottish Government. We're an independent comparison site. Throughout this guide we link to the official register and the tribunal as the authorities on registration and decisions — always verify anything important there. If you later use our quote service, we may earn a referral fee for an introduction to a partner factor; that never affects our ratings, rankings, or what we write.

What the Scottish Property Factor Register Is

The Scottish Property Factor Register is the official public register of property factors, run by the Scottish Government. It exists because of the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011, which for the first time required anyone acting as a property factor in Scotland to register before operating. The register and the associated regulation have been in force since October 2012.

The register answers one narrow question: is this business legally allowed to act as a property factor? Under section 12 of the Act, operating as a property factor while unregistered — without reasonable excuse — can be a criminal offence; on summary conviction a court can impose a fine of up to £5,000 (level 5 on the standard scale), up to six months' imprisonment, or both. Before a factor is admitted, they generally have to satisfy a "fit and proper person" test (sections 4 and 5), which looks at matters such as relevant convictions for fraud, dishonesty, violence or unlawful discrimination. This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice — the Act itself is the authority.

What a PF Number Is

Every registered factor is given a unique registration number in the form PF followed by six digits — for example, PF000103. This "PF number" is the key that unlocks everything else. It stays with the registered entity, so it's a far more reliable identifier than a trading name (which can change on a rebrand or be shared across sales, lettings and factoring arms of the same group).

You don't always have to look the number up. Under section 13(3) of the Act and paragraph 2.8 of the Code of Conduct, a factor is expected to take all reasonable steps to include its PF registered number on documents it sends to homeowners. So your factoring invoice, statement, or Written Statement of Services should already carry it. If it doesn't, it may be worth asking them about — and in the meantime you can find the number on the register instead.

How to Search the Official Register

The register's search lets you find out three things: whether a property factor is registered to provide services in Scotland; who the factor is for a particular property address or area of land; and the latest number of properties a factor manages. You need one of two things to search — the factor's name, or a property address.

Reading a Register Record

Once you open a factor's record, you'll see a consistent set of fields:

• Property factor registration number — the PF number.
• Registration status — active, or a warning that registration has expired.
• Company name and trading name — the legal entity and the brand it trades as.
• Trading type — for example, "Company".
• Business address and business website.
• Number of properties factored — as at the last annual update.

How to Search Tribunal Decisions by PF Number

This is the step almost no other guide teaches. The First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber) publishes its property-factor decisions in a searchable database. Each entry shows the case reference, the property factor, the PF number, the complaints made, the hearing date, and downloadable decision PDFs. Crucially, you can filter it by the same PF number you just found on the register.

Case references follow a set pattern: FTS/HPC/PF/YY/NNNN for property-factor cases and FTS/HPC/LM/YY/NNNN for land-management cases. So a reference beginning FTS/HPC/PF tells you at a glance it's a factoring dispute.

Understanding the Tribunal: Complain First, PFEOs, and What the Numbers Show

Before you can apply to the tribunal, there's a mandatory first step. Under section 17 of the 2011 Act, you must first notify your factor in writing of why you believe they've failed to comply with the Code of Conduct or their duties, and give them a reasonable chance to put things right. Apply without having done this and your application won't be accepted. Our complaints guide covers that first written stage in detail.

If the tribunal finds a failure, it can make a Property Factor Enforcement Order (PFEO) under sections 19–20 — an order requiring the factor to take the action the tribunal considers necessary and, where appropriate, to pay the homeowner. Failing to comply with a PFEO without reasonable excuse can be a criminal offence under section 24, and the tribunal reports failures to Scottish Ministers, who can ultimately remove a factor from the register.

The tribunal does bite. In its most recent published figures, for 2023–24, the Chamber received 303 property-factor applications — the most in a single year in its history. Of the 135 applications decided by a tribunal that year, it found the factor had failed to comply with the Code or their duties in 86 (about 64%), and 65 PFEOs were issued. The most common complaint areas were communication and consultation (62%), carrying out repairs and maintenance (58%), and complaints resolution (49%). Our own analysis of 569 tribunal cases since 2021 shows the same pattern across the sector.

What Registration Does Not Tell You

This is the heart of it. Registration answers "are they allowed to factor?" — not "are they any good?" A factor with a long list of upheld tribunal complaints can still be fully, currently registered. The register carries no service ratings, no complaint counts, and no quality judgement of any kind. Its property figures are a year old at most, and it can't be browsed by area.

So treat an active registration as the floor, not the finish line. To judge a factor, you need the things the register deliberately doesn't hold: their tribunal decision history (from the Chamber database above), their customer reviews, and a sense of how they compare with the alternatives near you. That's the gap the next section fills.

Where Compare Factors Fits (a Complement, Not a Replacement)

Compare Factors is a convenience layer over the official data — it does not replace the register or the tribunal, and it never determines whether a factor is registered. What it does is pull the public sources together so you don't have to hop between four websites. Each factor's profile combines:

• Official register data — property counts and building postcodes, each labelled with its source.
• Aggregated reviews from Google and Trustpilot (43,000+ across the sector).
• Tribunal records from the Housing and Property Chamber, linking out to the official decisions search filtered by that factor's PF number.
• A tribunal "risk band" — our own analysis of published decisions, not an official or government rating.

You can browse all registered factors, filter by our risk bands, or look at area pages and the factor map to see who operates near you — the area view the official register doesn't offer. But for the one question that matters legally — is this factor registered right now? — always confirm on the official register, which is the authority and updates ahead of any third party.

Why the Register's Totals and Ours Differ

You may notice the headline numbers don't match across sources, and that's expected rather than a mistake. A Scottish Government FOI response recorded 373 registered factors and 697,401 properties as at 23 March 2026, counting every entry on the register. Compare Factors profiles around 305 factors managing roughly 678,156 properties.

The gap comes down to what's being counted and when: we focus on currently active, genuine factoring operations and filter out expired, duplicate, or edge-case entries (for example, dormant registrations or non-factoring bodies), and data refreshes happen at different times. Neither figure is "wrong" — they answer slightly different questions. When you need the definitive, live position on a single factor, the register is the source of truth.

If a Record Is Missing or Looks Wrong

Because the register updates property and land data only at the annual update, a record can lag reality — a factor that recently took on or lost your building may not reflect it yet. If your property doesn't appear under any factor, or shows the wrong one, that's worth chasing: ask your factor directly (they're required to keep their registration accurate), and if a factor appears to be operating while unregistered, that can be reported to Police Scotland, as operating unregistered without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence. For anything you intend to rely on, screenshot the record with the date, since the BETA service may change.

Next Steps: Complain, or Switch

Checking the register and the tribunal is usually the start of something, not the end. If your look-up confirms your suspicions, you have two main routes:

• Not happy but want to stay? Follow the section 17 route — complain in writing first, then escalate to the tribunal if needed. Our step-by-step complaints guide has template letters and the full escalation path.
• Ready to move on? A majority of owners can change factor. See how to switch property factors in Scotland, and use how to choose a factor to line up a better-rated replacement before you serve notice.

Either way, the PF number you found on the register is the thread that ties it all together — from confirming registration, to reading tribunal decisions, to comparing your factor against the field.