Additional HMO licensing in England 2026: which smaller HMOs need a licence

Additional HMO licensing is a council scheme that makes smaller shared houses need a licence. National law licenses an HMO only when five or more people from two or more households live there. Section 56 of the Housing Act 2004 lets a council designate all or part of its area so that HMOs below that line need a licence too: usually shares of three or four people, sometimes flats and converted blocks of flats as well.

Two questions decide whether a house is caught. Is it an HMO at all? And does the council’s designation describe it? This guide answers both for England, with the rule and its source at each step. Wales and Scotland set their own HMO licensing rules.

The dates schemes start and end are in new licensing schemes, November 2026 to April 2027, and each council’s fees on its page under licence fees by council. Every rule below was read on legislation.gov.uk and GOV.UK on 25 October 2026, and each council’s designation on its own site the same day.

Mandatory and additional licensing compared

Both sit in Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004, so an additional licence is an HMO licence in every legal sense. What differs is what brings a house into it.

Selective licensing is a different scheme. It sits in Part 3 of the Act and covers rented homes in a designated area that no HMO licence covers, small HMOs included. An HMO that Part 2 covers does not need a selective licence as well (section 85(1)(a)), so a small share that an additional scheme covers needs one licence, not two. Where no HMO licence is needed (no additional scheme, or one whose description leaves the house out), a share of three or four in a selective area needs the selective licence instead.

Step one: is the house an HMO?

Most smaller shared houses are HMOs under the standard test in section 254(2). All of these must be true:

• The people living there do not all form one household.
• They live there as their only or main home. Students living there for a full-time course count (section 259).
• At least one of them pays rent or other consideration.
• Two or more households share a kitchen, a toilet or washing facilities, or the accommodation lacks one of them.
• Living there is the only use of that accommodation.

Household has a narrow meaning (section 258). One person is a household. So is a family: a couple who are married, civil partners or living together as a couple, and relatives, meaning parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces and cousins, a partner’s relatives included, with step-children and half-relations counted as full ones. Live-in domestic staff housed by the family they work for who pay no rent, such as an au pair or a carer, count as part of that household, and so do a foster child and an adult placed with an approved carer (regulations 3 and 4 of the 2006 HMO licensing regulations). Anyone else is a separate household, however long they have lived together.

Two people are never an HMO. A building occupied only by two people who form two households is outside the definition (Schedule 14, paragraph 7).

A share of three or four that passes this test is an HMO, but national law does not require it to be licensed. Only an additional designation can require an HMO licence for it; in a selective area it may need a selective licence instead. The HMO licence checker counts the people and households in one house. It does not apply the owner-occupier exception above, the purpose-built flat rule below or section 257, so rule those out first.

Step two: does the council’s designation describe it?

A designation under section 56 does two things. It names an area, which can be the whole district or part of it, down to a list of wards. And it describes the HMOs it covers, which can be every HMO in the area (section 56(4)) or a narrower kind. The description is the part landlords skip, and it is the part that decides the answer.

Five designations, each read on the council’s own site on 25 October 2026, show how far they differ. The area links to the council’s designation, the council’s name to its fees:

So a single-storey flat shared by three people is inside Reading’s scheme and outside Brighton & Hove’s. In Brighton & Hove’s four selective licensing wards (Kemptown, Moulsecoomb and Bevendean, Queens Park, and Whitehawk and Marina) that flat needs a selective licence instead: the council’s selective scheme takes in single-storey flats and bungalows with three or four unrelated occupiers that its HMO schemes leave out. A three-person share in York needs a licence in Fishergate and none in a ward outside the eight. The council’s own wording, usually in an annex to the notice of designation, is the test, not a summary of it.

The postcode licensing checker finds the ward for a postcode and says whether a council’s additional scheme reaches it, for the councils whose designations it holds.

How a scheme is made and how long it lasts

A council can designate only if it considers that a significant proportion of the HMOs of that description are managed so ineffectively that they cause, or are likely to cause, problems for the people living in them or for the public (section 56(2)). It must first take reasonable steps to consult the people likely to be affected (section 56(3)).

Since 23 December 2024 a general approval from the Secretary of State covers additional designations in England where the council consulted for at least 10 weeks, so no minister has to confirm each one. A designation made under it comes into force at least three months after the day it is made (section 58(8)) and ends no later than five years after it comes into force (section 60(2)). The council can revoke it sooner after a review. It cannot run past five years: carrying on needs a new designation, with a new consultation.

That gives a landlord notice. Under the general approval, ten weeks of consultation and three months before the start mean at least five months pass between a consultation opening and the first day a licence is needed.

A licence lasts for the term written on it, up to five years (section 68(4)), and many councils set that term to end with the scheme: every licence under Salford’s section 257 scheme ends on 24 November 2031. Where the term runs past the scheme’s end, the licence and its conditions carry on (section 68(3)(b) and (5)), but the council may revoke it once the house is no longer an HMO that Part 2 covers (section 70(1)(c) and (3)(a)).

Purpose-built flats: the gap in mandatory licensing

Five sharers are not always a mandatory HMO. The 2018 Order that sets the mandatory description leaves out a purpose-built flat in a block of three or more self-contained flats (article 4). Five friends in a flat in a purpose-built block of twelve need no licence under national law.

A flat in a converted house, or in a purpose-built building with fewer than three flats, is in mandatory licensing once five people from two or more households live there. Only an additional designation brings the flat in the larger block into HMO licensing, and one that covers every self-contained flat that is an HMO, as Oxford’s does, brings it in. Where none does, a selective designation can still require a selective licence for it.

Section 257 HMOs: converted blocks of flats

A building converted into self-contained flats can be an HMO as a whole, even though nobody shares a kitchen. Section 257 applies when both of these are true:

• The conversion did not meet the building standards that applied to it, and still does not. For a conversion completed before 1 June 1992 that means the Building Regulations 1991 as they stood on that date; for a later one, the building regulations in force when it was done.
• Less than two-thirds of the flats are owner-occupied. A flat is owner-occupied when the freeholder, a leaseholder on a lease of more than 21 years, or a member of their household lives in it.

The two-thirds line is exact, so count the flats before anything else. For a conversion that falls short of the standards:

Mandatory licensing never covers a section 257 block, because the 2018 Order lists the standard, self-contained flat and converted building tests and not section 257. So a block like this needs a licence only where an additional designation names it. Salford’s new scheme is for these blocks alone, Oxford’s takes in the mainly or wholly tenanted ones, and Reading’s and Brighton & Hove’s leave them out. A flat inside the block that is itself shared can still be an HMO in its own right.

Buildings that are not HMOs

Schedule 14 takes some buildings out of the definition, so no HMO licence of either kind applies to them:

• Buildings managed or controlled by a council, a registered provider of social housing, the police, a fire and rescue authority or an NHS body (paragraphs 2 and 2A).
• Buildings occupied solely or principally by full-time students where the manager is their university or college and regulations specify it, or the manager is a person specified in regulations (paragraph 3A, which took over from paragraph 4 in England on 1 May 2026). A house a private landlord lets to students is normally not covered by it.
• Buildings occupied mainly by a religious community (paragraph 5).
• An owner’s home with no more than two lodgers (paragraph 6, with regulation 6(2) of the 2006 HMO licensing regulations setting the number at two). The owner is the freeholder or a leaseholder on a lease of more than 21 years.
• Two people forming two households (paragraph 7).

A landlord who means to take a house out of licensing, by cutting the number of occupiers or selling it empty, can notify the council and ask for a temporary exemption notice (section 62). One lasts three months. A second three months is possible only where the council thinks the circumstances are exceptional.

What an additional licence asks of you

The mandatory conditions in Schedule 4 go into every Part 2 licence, additional ones included:

• The gas safety certificate given to the council every year, where gas is supplied.
• Electrical installations, appliances and furniture kept safe, with a declaration to the council when it asks.
• A smoke alarm on each storey with living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation that has a fixed combustion appliance other than a gas cooker.
• A written statement of the terms of occupation for each occupier.
• Bedrooms of at least 6.51 square metres for one person over 10 and 10.22 for two, and no one sleeping in a room under 4.64 (paragraph 1A).
• The council’s arrangements for storing and disposing of household waste (paragraph 1C).

A box room is where the sizes bite on a small share: under 6.51 square metres, no adult may sleep in it once the house is licensed, under an additional licence as much as a mandatory one. The HMO room sizes guide covers the measuring, and the HMO compliance guide the fire rules.

The council adds its own conditions on management, use and facilities (section 67), and the manager must be a fit and proper person. A licence lasts up to five years, covers one HMO and cannot be transferred (section 68), so a buyer applies for their own.

Letting without a licence

Where a designation covers the house and it is not licensed, the person managing it or in control of it commits an offence (section 72(1)). Since 1 May 2026 a landlord higher up the chain commits it too: the owner who lets the house to a rent-to-rent operator, for example. That landlord has a defence if they did not know, and had a reasonable excuse for not knowing, that it was an HMO, took all reasonably practicable steps to get it licensed, or had some other reasonable excuse (section 72(4B)). A clause in the lease making the operator responsible is not, by itself, a defence (section 72(4C)).

The council can prosecute, with an unlimited fine on conviction, or impose a civil penalty of up to £40,000 for conduct from 1 May 2026, or £30,000 before that (section 249A). The tenant or the council can also apply for a Rent Repayment Order: for the part of an offence from 1 May 2026, up to two years’ rent for the period it continued, where it was 12 months before (Housing and Planning Act 2016, section 44).

The defence that matters most is the simplest. An application duly made, or a notification for a temporary exemption, that is still effective is a defence to the licensing offence (section 72(4)). Apply as soon as the house is covered, not when the council writes.

Keeping the licence on the house

In LetCompliance the licence is recorded on its property by type (mandatory HMO, additional HMO or selective), with the council, the reference and the expiry date, and reminders go out 90, 30 and 7 days before it ends. Each room has its own tenancy, rent and floor area, and a bedroom smaller than the paragraph 1A minimum for the tenants recorded in it is flagged.

Run the share room by room, with its licence on the same record. Rent and arrears for each room, the licence and the certificates for the house, and the tenancies signed online. Set up your HMO