Compliance
Compliance is the part of letting that only gets noticed once it has gone wrong.
Licensing, certificates and inspections are where a rental quietly turns into a liability. On the properties we manage we handle the whole of it for you: the application, the standard your property has to reach, the paperwork that proves it did, and the renewals that come round sooner than anyone expects.
- Site visit before any application
- Licensing, planning and the works
- Included on managed properties
What we do
We take you through the whole of it, and we look before we leap.
We attend your property first and confirm whether the correct licence can lawfully be applied for, and whether planning permission is needed, before anything is submitted. That order matters: an application made on a property that cannot lawfully be licensed is a refusal with a fee attached.
From there we handle the application, the works needed to reach the standard, and the certificates that prove it.
What counts as an HMO
A house in multiple occupation is a property occupied by three or more people forming two or more households who share a kitchen, a bathroom or a toilet.
The test is households rather than how well people know one another: three friends sharing are three households, a couple with children are one. Whether that HMO needs a licence, and which kind, depends on how many people live there and on the borough.
Additional HMO licence
Covers smaller HMOs, typically three or four occupiers, but only in boroughs that have designated an additional licensing scheme. Whether one exists where you are is decided locally.
- Application to the council, with the council’s fee. A licence runs for up to five years.
- Fire doors to bedrooms and kitchen: 44mm, intumescent fire strip, three fire-rated hinges and an overhead closer.
- Interconnected smoke alarms in each bedroom and the hallway, with a heat detector in the kitchen, and a certificate of installation.
- Emergency lighting, with a certificate.
Mandatory HMO licence
Five or more people forming two or more households who share amenities. This one applies right across England, whichever borough your property sits in.
- Application to the council, with the council’s fee. A licence runs for up to five years.
- Fire doors to bedrooms and kitchen: 44mm, intumescent fire strip, three fire-rated hinges and an overhead closer.
- A panelled Grade A fire alarm system, with a certificate of installation.
- Emergency lighting, with a certificate.
- Fire risk assessment.
Planning permission and Article 4
Licensing and planning are two separate permissions. A licence does not make the use lawful, and this is the step most often missed.
An ordinary dwellinghouse is use class C3. A small HMO for three to six people is C4. Changing from C3 to C4 is normally permitted development, but most London boroughs now operate an Article 4 direction that removes that right; planning permission therefore has to be applied for first.
An HMO for seven or more people falls outside both classes and always requires planning permission, Article 4 or not.
Selective licensing
Most boroughs also run a selective scheme, which catches ordinary single-family rentals in a designated area, with no HMO involved at all.
- Application to the council, with the council’s fee. A licence runs for up to five years.
- Interconnected smoke alarms, with a heat detector in the kitchen.
What it costs to get it wrong
Letting without the correct licence, or without the fire protection the licence requires, is an offence. The figures below are current as at September 2026.
- Civil penalty
- Up to £40,000 per offence, imposed by the council as an alternative to prosecuting. Raised from £30,000 on 1 May 2026 by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025.
- Criminal prosecution
- If the council prosecutes through the courts instead, there is no upper limit on the fine a judge can impose.
- Separate penalties
- Each joint landlord can be fined separately, and a company and its directors can both be held liable for the same offence.
- Rent repayment orders
- Tenants or the council can apply to the First-tier Tribunal for up to 24 months’ rent to be repaid.
- Banning orders
- A landlord can be banned from letting property or from managing licensable property in future.
- Possession
- Letting without a required licence restricts the grounds available to recover the property.
Certificates and checks
We make sure the certificates a licence rests on are in place; they are the same evidence an officer asks to see if they call round without warning.
- Gas Safety Certificate
- Electrical Installation Condition Report
- Energy Performance Certificate
- Portable appliance testing
- Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms
- Fire risk assessment
- Emergency lighting and fire equipment servicing
- Room sizes and amenity standards for the licence applied for
Works, and future-proofing
Where your property needs work to reach the standard, we carry it out, and we do it so that you are not back in the same position in two years.
- Damp and mould works
- Carpentry
- Electrical
- Plumbing
- Building works
- Loft extensions
Our contractors are tried and trusted; the same trades we use repeatedly across the properties we manage, rather than whoever answers the phone.
How we handle it
On managed properties this is part of the fee rather than an extra, which is the main reason it gets done on time.
We survey your property before an application goes anywhere and tell you what needs doing to reach the standard, rather than submitting it and waiting to be refused. Certificates are held against their expiry dates and renewed before they lapse, not after a reminder arrives.
If a scheme changes in your borough you hear it from us rather than from the council. That is what the phrase “24/7 compliance protection” on the rest of the site actually means: someone is watching the dates so that you do not have to.
Accredited
The memberships and registrations we hold, with the numbers on them, so that you can go and check every one of them yourself.
UKALA 10977 · ICO ZB240936 · VAT 430013367