Licence RadarEngland

Did your rented home need a licence?

Many homes in England have to be licensed by the council — every house shared by five or more people, and every privately rented home in a selective licensing area. If yours needed one and none appears on the council's register, a tribunal can order the landlord to repay rent for up to 24 months — 12 for any of it before 1 May 2026, when the rules changed. Check in five minutes — free.

Check my address

Not a law firm. We don't assess your chances. You file the application yourself or choose a firm. This is not legal advice.

How it works

  1. 1. Tell us about the home. Postcode, how many people and households live there, the rent and the dates.
  2. 2. We work out which scheme applied, and when. A scheme that started after you moved in only creates a duty from its start date.
  3. 3. We look for a licence — where there is a register to look in. For Nottingham City Council, London Borough of Camden and London Borough of Hounslow we search the copy we imported, and show the date it was taken, which is what a tribunal will want to see. London Borough of Newham, London Borough of Waltham Forest and Oxford City Council publish no register anyone can hold a copy of — not us and not you — so there the step is a question you put to the council. We give you the wording and somewhere to record the answer, because that written answer is the evidence.
  4. 4. You get the figures and the papers. The maximum the tribunal could order, a rent schedule, a witness statement and what to put on the application form — which you file yourself.

What we do not do

  • We never apply to the tribunal for you and never correspond with it on your behalf.
  • We do not say your landlord committed an offence. A tribunal decides that, to the criminal standard, and a landlord may have a defence — a pending licence application, for one — that no register shows.
  • We do not predict what a tribunal will order, and we take no share of it.
  • We publish no list of landlords and pass nobody's data to anyone without being asked to.

Councils we have mapped

  • London Borough of Newham — Borough-wide selective licensing (third scheme). Register: this council does not publish one as a file, so you ask them and record the answer.
  • London Borough of Waltham Forest — Selective licensing 2025. Register: this council does not publish one as a file, so you ask them and record the answer.
  • Nottingham City Council — Selective licensing scheme 2. Register: we hold a copy and search it for you.
  • London Borough of Camden — Borough-wide additional HMO licensing 2025. Register: we hold a copy and search it for you.
  • London Borough of Hounslow — Additional HMO licensing scheme (4) 2025. Register: we hold a copy and search it for you.
  • Oxford City Council — Oxford City Council Additional Licensing of HMOs Scheme 2021, Oxford City Council Additional Licensing of HMOs Scheme 2026. Register: this council does not publish one as a file, so you ask them and record the answer.

Somewhere else? Run the check anyway — you still get the dates, the figures and the papers. On the result page you can leave an email to be told when we add your council, and those requests are how we decide what to map next. Nothing is recorded about your area unless you leave it.

Where the rules come from