Terms of use

What this service is

Licence Radar checks whether your rented home needed a licence from the council, searches the copy we hold of that council's published register, works out the maximum a tribunal could order repaid under section 44 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and prepares draft papers for you. Not a law firm. We don't assess your chances. You file the application yourself or choose a firm.

Preparing documents is not a reserved legal activity. Applying to a tribunal and corresponding with it on someone else's behalf is — it is the conduct of litigation under the Legal Services Act 2007, and we do not do it. Every document we produce is a draft for you to read, correct, sign and file yourself.

What we do not promise

• We do not promise any outcome, any amount, or that a tribunal will agree with the calculation.
• We do not say an offence was committed. We say whether a licence was required and whether one appears on the register we hold. A tribunal decides the rest, to the criminal standard, and a landlord may have a defence that no register shows.
• The figures shown are the statutory range and the conventional interest rate, applied to what you told us. If a date or an amount you entered is wrong, the figures are wrong.
• A register is a copy, taken on a date we show you. A licence granted after that date will not be in it, which is why the result page names the date and warns when the copy is old.

If we refer you to a solicitor

If you ask us to send your case file to a partner firm, we tell you the fee that firm pays us before you agree, and the firm confirms it to you in writing. You are free to instruct anyone else, and the firm decides for itself whether to take the case.

Your part

Check every date, name and figure before you file anything. You sign the statement of truth on the application and on your witness statement, and you are responsible for what they say.