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. However, if you rent out a flat in a converted building, you should also check the additional licensing schemes below as some buildings containing flats do need to be licensed.
If you rent your property as a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO), the answer is more complicated. Barnet Council started an additional licensing scheme on 5 July 2016, plus there is 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 will continue until 4 July 2021, unless the council chose to implement a replacement scheme.
While the scheme applies borough wide, the licensing criteria are quite complicated. When we last checked the council’s website in August 2020, it said all HMOs need to be licensed unless they fall into an exempted category. We think this is incorrect and have dropped the council a line to check.
According to the council's additional licensing public notice, the scheme applies to HMOs that meet 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 have also 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 have only included ones that comprise three or more storeys and have been converted into and consist of four or more self-contained flats and where both the building and self-contained flats it contains are owned by the same person (none of the individual flats within the building being under separate ownership).
This is one of the more complicated set of licensing criteria we have seen! You might need to read this section several times and study the scheme designation in the ‘More Information’ box on the right of this webpage, to make sure you understand what it means.