HMO licensing and planning permission: two separate consents

An HMO licence and planning permission are two separate consents, granted by two separate teams, under two separate Acts. Holding one gives you nothing on the other. Landlords are caught both ways: licensed properties operating as an unlawful use, and lawful uses running unlicensed.

The sequence that works is planning first, licence second. The reverse order produces a licensed house that the planning team can still take enforcement action against.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Licensing schemes are local and change, so check the current position with the council.

Why a licence does not make the use lawful

Licensing sits in the Housing Act 2004 and is about the property: the fitness of the manager, room sizes, amenities, fire safety, waste storage and management arrangements. The council's housing team administers it.

Planning sits in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and is about the use: whether letting the house to six unrelated people is a material change of use requiring permission, and if so whether it is acceptable in that street.

The two teams work from different records and do not always talk. A licence application can be granted without the planning position being checked, and applicants sometimes read that as approval. It is not, and the planning file will say so if enforcement follows.

Mandatory, additional and selective licensing

Mandatory licensing applies across England to HMOs occupied by five or more people forming two or more households, whatever the number of storeys.

Additional licensing is a scheme a council designates to cover HMOs below the mandatory threshold, often the whole of a ward or district. Selective licensing goes wider again, catching privately rented homes generally in a designated area regardless of whether they are HMOs. Both are time limited designations, usually running for a set number of years before renewal.

Check all three before buying. A property outside mandatory licensing can still need a licence under an additional scheme, and the schemes are not always obvious from the council's main planning pages.

Where C4 ends and sui generis begins

The Use Classes Order puts small shared houses occupied by between three and six unrelated people, sharing basic amenities, in Class C4. A family dwelling is C3.

Permitted development allows movement between C3 and C4 in both directions, so in most of the country converting a family house into a small shared house needs no application. Many councils in university towns and cities with concentrations of shared housing have made Article 4 directions removing the right in one direction, which is why the answer differs between neighbouring authorities.

Above six occupiers the use falls outside C4 and becomes sui generis. There is no permitted development route into a sui generis use, so a large HMO always needs planning permission. The count is of people, not bedrooms, and councils condition the maximum occupancy accordingly.

Room sizes: licensing standards against planning amenity

Licence conditions set minimum sleeping room areas, with separate figures for one adult, two adults and a child under ten. Those are floor areas of usable space, and rooms with substantial sloping ceilings lose the area below the qualifying height.

Councils publish amenity standards alongside them: how many people share a bathroom, how many share a kitchen, the size of communal space, waste storage capacity and cycle parking. Some are licence conditions, some are policy applied through planning, and the two sets of numbers are not always the same.

Design to the more demanding of the two. A layout that satisfies the licence and fails the council's HMO planning policy is a refused application, and a layout that satisfies planning but has a bedroom below the licence minimum cannot be let to the occupancy you assumed.

Concentration policies, parking and the neighbours

Where planning permission is needed, most refusals turn on three things.

Concentration comes first. Many councils have a policy limiting the proportion of HMOs within a stated radius of the application property, and they publish the underlying data or will supply it on request. Check the position before you buy, because a scheme failing a concentration threshold is very hard to rescue.

Parking is second. Councils in areas of on-street pressure expect evidence rather than assertion, and a Parking Survey carried out to a recognised methodology, on the right nights of the week and outside holiday periods, is the way to provide it.

Refuse storage is third and is the most common reason for an objection from the street. Show the bin capacity for the proposed occupancy, the storage position, and the route to the collection point. Applications of this kind attract representations, and how neighbours object is worth understanding from the other side of the counter.

Enforcement risk when only one consent is held

Two exposures, and they behave differently.

On the licensing side, operating an unlicensed HMO can bring a prosecution or a civil penalty running into tens of thousands of pounds, plus a rent repayment order covering up to a year of rent. An unlicensed landlord also cannot serve a valid notice to end an assured shorthold tenancy under the accelerated procedure, which tends to be the problem that concentrates minds.

On the planning side, an unlawful change of use can be enforced against, and enforcement time limits were extended by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, so check the current periods rather than relying on the older rules. A lawful development certificate is the only formal way to confirm that an existing use is immune or that a proposed use is lawful.

Fire safety and the works themselves

Converting a family house into a shared house usually means protected escape routes, interlinked detection, fire doors and sometimes a sprinkler or mist system, following the guidance councils apply to HMOs. Those works drive the internal layout, so bring them into the design at the same time as the room sizes rather than after the licence conditions arrive.

Sequencing the two applications

1. Establish the planning position: is the property in an Article 4 area, and will the occupancy exceed six.
2. If permission is needed, apply, with a short Planning Statement covering concentration, parking, refuse and amenity.
3. If permission is not needed, consider a lawful development certificate to put the position beyond argument for a future sale.
4. Design the layout to whichever room and amenity standard is more demanding.
5. Apply for the licence once the planning position is settled.
6. Deal with fire safety and any building regulations approvals in parallel, because they drive the internal layout.

Doing it in that order costs a few weeks. Doing it in the other order can cost a year.

Check the planning position before you exchange on the property. You can enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.