Licensing when your properties sit in different council areas

There is no national landlord licence. Whether a scheme exists at all, what it costs, how long it lasts, how it is banded and what conditions come attached are each decided by the individual council.

One property, one council, one set of rules. Properties in three councils and you are running three regimes at once, with three renewal dates that have nothing to do with each other.

The figures below are from 48 councils' own published fee schedules, 97 exact amounts with no estimates among them.

The same licence, 2.6 times the price

Counted on 26 October 2026 from the fee data behind the landlord licence fees hub, the fee for a new licence in each case. Renewals are left out, and so is a fee charged per unit, such as Ipswich's £126 a unit, which cannot be ranked against a flat amount. Manchester is not in the additional row: its own HMO page says "We don't currently have an additional licensing scheme".

The first count, on 21 September 2026, named Luton as the cheapest mandatory HMO licence at £488. Luton's own pages, read again on 25 October 2026, give £1,142.27 for a three-bedroom HMO, and more for each bedroom after that. £488, the cheapest in the additional and the selective rows, is what its questions and answers give for a five-year additional or selective licence on a three-bedroom property. It is not a fee anyone can pay today: on 26 October 2026 the council was not taking applications for either scheme, it says those fees will be revised, and a licence applied for part way through a scheme is charged only for the months the scheme has left. Redbridge, the dearest in that first count at £1,865.34 for two households, now sits just below Bristol, where £1,886 is the fee for a new mandatory licence and a renewal is £1,564.

A landlord with the same kind of HMO in Milton Keynes and in Bristol pays £730 for one licence and £1,886 for the other. Nothing about the properties has to differ. The council does.

Three councils means three licence dates with nothing in common. From £7.99 a month for one property, or £19 a month for up to ten, LetCompliance runs the tenancy, the rent and the tax for every property from one login, and holds each licence on its property with reminders 90, 30 and 7 days before it expires. Get started

Four things that differ besides the price

1. Whether a scheme exists at all. Mandatory HMO licensing is national, but additional and selective schemes are local and time-limited. Fewer than half of the 48 councils here run all three types. The rest run one or two, and a scheme can begin or lapse without anything changing at your property: Croydon's selective scheme has covered fourteen wards since 25 September 2026, and Tower Hamlets closed its selective scheme on 30 September 2026.

2. How the fee is banded. Councils measure the same house differently, which is why comparing headline prices understates the problem:

• Redbridge bands by households: £696.14 then £1,169.20 for two households, rising to £2,185.95 at five.
• Sheffield bands by bedrooms: £1,185 up to five, £1,390 for six to nine.
• Liverpool bands by units of accommodation: £1,328 up to five, £1,449 at six, £1,570 at seven.
• Newham bands by lettings: £1,400 up to five, £1,550 for six to nine, and £750 more for each additional ten above eighty.

3. When you pay. Most of these are split into two parts, and the split is not uniform. Liverpool takes £489.10 with the application, which is not refunded, and £838.90 on grant. Sheffield takes £725 up front and £460 within fourteen days of the draft licence. Tower Hamlets charges £977 online and £1,147 by post for the same licence, and £1,037 if you pay in two instalments rather than one.

4. How long it runs. Most licences here run up to five years, but not always five years from the day you apply. A Brighton & Hove additional or selective licence ends when its scheme does, on 30 June 2029 and 1 September 2029, and a Leeds selective licence on 8 February 2031, so one bought late in a scheme buys less time for the same money. Two councils offer a cheaper one-year option: Croydon's selective licence is £800 for five years or £544 for one, and its additional HMO licence £1,250 or £850.

The discount that is not a portfolio discount

Several councils reduce the fee for a second and later property, which reads like a volume discount until you check the condition. In most cases it is the same building, not the same landlord:

• Waltham Forest: a second and later dwelling in the same building is £125 cheaper.
• Croydon: £100 off for a second flat in the same block.
• Hackney: £100 off Part A where the property is one of several dwellings in the same building.
• Nottingham: a block of flats is licensed together, from £2,841 plus £560 a dwelling.

So a landlord with eight flats in one converted house saves on all of them. A landlord with eight houses spread across the same borough saves nothing. The discount rewards the shape of the building, not the size of the portfolio.

Two exceptions worth knowing:

• Newham: on the selective scheme, "a second property onwards is £700" against £750, with no same-building condition.
• Salford: on its mandatory HMO licence, a second and later application is £945 against £970.

The discount that does scale

Accreditation is the one that pays back across a whole portfolio, because it attaches to you rather than to a building:

• Nottingham: on its selective scheme, an accredited holder pays £759 where the standard fee is £950.
• Salford: on its mandatory HMO licence (£970 as standard), an accredited landlord pays £945 first time and £910 after.
• Hackney: £100 off Part B for an accredited landlord, on top of £100 for an EPC of B or above and £50 for a C.
• Croydon: £100 for accreditation, £50 for an EPC of B or above.
• Newham: £50 off for membership of a recognised landlord association.

Energy performance turns up repeatedly in the same lists, which is the other discount that follows the property rather than the building. Newham charges £400 rather than £750 for a home never let before with an EPC of C or above.

Across ten or twelve licences those are not rounding errors. They are also the sort of thing that has to be claimed at application, not afterwards.

What it actually costs you to be in three councils

Money is the visible part and the smaller one. The rest:

• Three renewal dates, each five years from its own grant, none aligned. A licence that lapses is an offence, not a late fee.
• Three sets of conditions. Councils attach their own requirements about room sizes, amenities, waste, fire precautions and management. They are not the same, so a standard operating procedure that satisfies one council can fall short in another.
• Three fee schedules that change independently. A council can revise its fees without reference to anything you are doing.
• Three definitions of the thing you own. As above: households, bedrooms, units or lettings. A property that sits in one band in Sheffield can sit in another in Redbridge.

None of this is complicated in isolation. It is only unmanageable as a memory exercise, which is what it becomes at the point when the properties are in different places and the dates are years apart.

LetCompliance publishes each council's schedule, taken from the council's own page, in the landlord licence fees hub. In your account, each licence sits against its property with its own expiry date, next to the gas, electrical and deposit dates that run on their own clocks, and a lapsed licence shows up in that property's 0 to 100 compliance score.

Source: the fees above are each council's own published schedule, recorded in the LetCompliance licence fees dataset, reviewed on 20 September 2026, with later readings of the councils' pages for Leeds, Liverpool, Haringey and Brent on 15 October, Medway on 22 October, Luton and Newcastle on 25 October, and Luton's additional and selective licensing pages again on 26 October 2026. Every figure quoted is an exact published amount rather than an estimate. Fees change; the council's own page is always the authority for the amount that applies to you.