HMO Licensing

On 28th December Alok Sharma MP, the Housing Minister, announced that the HMOs that fall into mandatory licensing will change.

Currently HMOs with 5 or more people from two or more families and where the property is over three or more qualifying storeys, need to have a Mandatory HMO licence. These rules have not changed since 2006 when they were introduced.

Last year there was a consultation on changing the definition of which HMOs need Mandatory licensing and it was proposed this would be any HMO with 5 or more people, regardless of the number of storeys. This is what they are now saying they will draft legislation to implement. The draft legislation is not yet available for reading but it is anticipated this may come into force for April 2018 as it does not need an act of parliament, only new regulations.

The proposals also include new minimum room sizes for HMO with 6.51square metres for a single person and 10.22 square metres for a room for two people. For some landlord this will result in losing income as rooms become unlawful to let due to the new size criteria. Obviously critical to this will be the transitional provisions. For example, if introduced in April 2018 will you immediately have to evict all existing occupiers in rooms that fail the size standard or will it only apply to new letting? We await the draft legislation to understand the answer to that.

These changes only apply in England as Wales, under a devolved housing power, produced their own HMO mandatory licensing rules and so it will be for them to make any changes.