You do not need a licence if you rent your property to a single family as Barnet Council do not operate a selective licensing scheme.
If you rent your property as a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO), the answer is more complicated. Barnet Council had an additional licensing scheme that ended on 4 July 2021. There is still the mandatory HMO licensing scheme that applies throughout England.
To help you decide if you need a licence we’ve outlined the two HMO licensing schemes below:
1. Mandatory HMO licensing
You will need a mandatory HMO licence if your property meets the standard test, self-contained flat test or converted building test HMO definition in section 254 of the Housing Act 2004 and is occupied by five or more people.
But what are these tests and what does this mean in practice? It means you need a licence for any house or flat that is occupied by five or more people who are not all related and live in the property as their main home. For example, it includes:
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Shared houses and flats occupied by students and young professionals;
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Properties converted into bedsits with some shared facilities; and
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Properties converted into a mixture of self-contained and non self-contained accommodation.
Prior to 1 October 2018, the mandatory HMO licensing scheme only applied to properties that were three or more storeys in height, but that restriction has now been lifted.
The government have decided to exclude purpose built self-contained flats within a block comprising three or more self-contained flats from the mandatory HMO licensing scheme. While this will be good news for some landlords, it does make the licensing scheme far more complicated.
To find out more, you can read our free guide to mandatory HMO licensing (here).
2. Additional licensing
The additional licensing scheme started on 5 July 2016 and ended on 4 July 2021. The council consulted on plans for a replacement scheme until 5 November 2021.
While the scheme applied borough wide, the licensing criteria were quite complicated. The scheme applied to HMOs that met any of the following criteria:
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Any HMO of two or more storeys, occupied by four or more persons in two or more households and where some or all facilities are shared or missing.
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Any flat occupied by four or more persons in two or more households and where some or all facilities are shared or missing, where the flat is on the second storey or higher.
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Any HMO of two or more storeys, with a resident owner and occupied by four or more other persons in two or more households and where some or all facilities are shared or missing.
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Any house of two or more storeys comprised of both self-contained and non self-contained units of accommodation occupied in aggregate by four or more persons in two or more households (not including a resident owner), some of whom share or lack one or more basic amenities such as a bathroom, toilet or cooking facilities.
The council had included ‘section 257 HMOs: certain converted blocks of flats’ in the scheme. These are properties that:
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have been converted into self-contained flats;
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less than two thirds of the flats are owner occupied; and
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the conversion did not comply with the relevant Building Regulations in force at that time and still does not comply.
Rather than including all section 257 HMOs, the council only included ones that comprised three or more storeys and had been converted into and consisted of four or more self-contained flats and where both the building and self-contained flats it contained were owned by the same person (none of the individual flats within the building being under separate ownership).