Scope: the 2023 regulations are an England instrument. Council tax is devolved; Wales and Scotland have their own arrangements. Position verified against gov.uk on 9 August 2026.
For years the Valuation Office Agency could and did split HMOs into separate council tax bands — one per letting room. A six-bed HMO could carry six Band A charges. Landlords found out when the bills arrived, often backdated, and the arithmetic destroyed the business case.
That changed on 1 December 2023.
What the regulations do
The Council Tax (Chargeable Dwellings and Liability for Owners) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023, laid on 8 November 2023 and in force from 1 December 2023:
- ensure HMOs within scope are valued as a single dwelling for council tax, and
- place the liability on the landlord rather than the occupiers.
One property, one band, one bill, addressed to you.
Which HMOs are in scope
The regulations adopt broadly the section 254 definition from the Housing Act 2004 — the same definition as everything else in this cluster — but as if subsections (1)(e) and (5) were omitted.
So the ordinary shared house, the bedsit HMO, the student let: in scope, single band.
The exclusion that matters
Self-contained flats caught by section 257 are excluded from these regulations. The government’s position is that such flats should normally have their own council tax band, and they keep them.
This is the trap for anyone who read the headline and stopped. A section 257 HMO is an HMO for licensing and management purposes, and its flats are still separately banded with liability on the occupiers. Freeholders of converted blocks got no relief here.
Re-banding
For licensed HMOs, the VOA said it would proactively re-band properties currently split across multiple bands, aggregating them to one. Landlords of unlicensed but in-scope HMOs may need to raise it themselves.
If your HMO is still carrying multiple bands and it is in scope, that is worth checking — and worth checking against your own records, because the change did not reach every property automatically.
What it means in practice
- One bill, and it is yours. Budget it as an operating cost. It is an allowable expense against rental income — see allowable expenses.
- Voids do not help. The liability sits with you whether or not rooms are occupied, so an empty room costs rent and carries its share of the charge.
- Tenants are not liable, which removes a category of arrears and a category of dispute.
- Student exemptions still work where the occupiers qualify, but they now bear on a single dwelling rather than room by room, so the arithmetic differs.
Wales
Council tax is devolved and the 2023 regulations do not extend to Wales, so the position there is set by Welsh legislation and the Welsh valuation practice. Do not apply the England rule to a Welsh HMO. See HMO licensing in Wales and the divergence map.
One bill is easier to forget than six. Check what else applies to your HMO.
Information tool, not tax advice. Banding is property-specific; the VOA decides it.