Licence fees councils actually charge

This page contains no estimates. Every figure below is one a council has published, recorded against that council, with the date we last checked it. Where a council has not published a fee, it is absent rather than guessed at — including one that tells us in as many words that its selective fee is "not yet published".

That matters because a licence fee is not a market price. It is set by the authority under section 63(3) and section 87(3) of the Housing Act 2004 to cover the cost of running the scheme, so it varies with how a council chose to resource it, not with anything about your property. A "typical range" tells you nothing you can budget against.

What we hold

We hold a published selective licensing fee for 31 councils and a published additional licensing fee for 20, out of 318 councils in England and Wales.

Selective licences in our records run from £350 to £1,100, median £735 across 31 councils.

Additional licences run from £550 to £1,818, median £970 across 20 councils.

Those spreads describe the councils we hold a figure for, and nothing else. They are not a national average and should not be read as one.

The headline is rarely the whole fee

Read the third column below rather than the second. Councils structure fees in ways a single number hides:

• Split payments. Many charge part on application and part on grant — the application part is usually non-refundable whether or not the licence is issued.
• Per-unit additions. Some add a charge per letting or per household on top of the property fee.
• Discounts. Accreditation, early application, and portfolio discounts are common, and some are substantial.
• Duration. A fee is for the life of the designation, usually five years. A higher fee over five years can be cheaper annually than a lower one over three.

Selective licensing fees

Additional (HMO) licensing fees

What a fee does not buy you

Paying the fee is not the compliance. The licence carries conditions — under section 90 for selective and section 67 for HMOs — and breaching them is a separate offence from being unlicensed. Nor does a fee protect you retrospectively: letting before the licence is applied for leaves the period before the application exposed to a rent repayment order.

And the fee is small against the downside. Letting an unlicensed property where a scheme applies carries a civil penalty of up to £30,000 under section 249A, or prosecution, plus a rent repayment order of up to twelve months' rent.

Fees change, usually at the start of a financial year and always when a scheme is re-designated. Each row above carries the date we last verified it. Confirm the current figure with the council before budgeting.