Licensing changes: August 2026

Scope: England and Wales. The position as at 11 August 2026, read from each council's own designation. This is a dated monthly record and it will not be revised — for the current position on any council below, follow its link, which renders live from our records.

Two schemes come into force this month and five more are designated and imminent. One council is doing something unusual enough to lead with.

Croydon designates two schemes at once

Croydon designated both a selective scheme and a borough-wide additional HMO scheme on 25 March 2026, and both come into force on 1 September 2026 for five years.

Running both together is not common, and the combination is what matters to a landlord there. The additional HMO designation is borough-wide — every ward, every licensable HMO outside the mandatory regime. The selective designation covers 14 of Croydon's 28 wards, so a single-household let needs a licence in half the borough and none in the other half.

The practical consequence: in Croydon you now have to answer two questions rather than one. Is this an HMO that the additional scheme catches, and if it is not, is the address inside one of the fourteen selective wards? Getting the first right does not settle the second. Croydon is also the council whose own notice and web page contradicted each other in an earlier designation — the reason we wrote the Croydon case, and reason enough to check the ward map for your specific address rather than trusting a summary.

In force this month

Telford and Wrekin is the first West Midlands authority in our records to take an additional HMO scheme borough-wide this year. Cabinet approved the designation in May 2026 following consultation. From 25 August, a licensable HMO anywhere in the borough needs a licence — there is no part of the authority left outside it.

Hillingdon takes the same borough-wide model and reaches it first, a day ahead of Telford, approved by Cabinet on 19 February 2026 after a ten-week consultation that ran from 31 October 2025 to 11 January 2026.

Neither is a renewal. Both are new obligations for landlords who did not previously need a licence, and in both cases the licence is required from the commencement date — not from the date you get round to applying.

Designated, coming shortly

Enfield's renewal is the one to read carefully

Enfield's outgoing 14-ward selective designation ends on 31 August 2026 and is replaced without a gap on 1 September by a new scheme covering 17 wards, approved by Cabinet on 22 April 2026.

Two things follow. If you are in one of the original fourteen, there is no window in which no licence is needed — the schemes abut, and a licence issued under the old designation does not automatically carry into the new one. If you are in one of the three added wards, you have a new duty starting 1 September with no transition.

A renewal is the easiest change to miss precisely because nothing appears to happen on the day.

Expiring within twelve months

An expiry is not automatically good news. A scheme that lapses is frequently redesignated, sometimes over a wider area, and the consultation for the replacement usually opens months before the old one ends. Enfield above is exactly that pattern. Treat an expiry date as the moment to check for a successor designation, not as the end of the obligation.

What to do with this

If your property sits in any council named here, the questions are the same ones: does the scheme cover your address, does it cover your type of letting, and when does the duty start. How to check whether your property needs a licence walks the sequence, and selective vs additional vs mandatory covers which regime is which.

The penalty for getting it wrong is not the licence fee. Operating unlicensed is a criminal offence carrying a civil penalty of up to £30,000 and a rent repayment order of up to twelve months' rent.

Run the free compliance check for your address, or browse every scheme change we hold, which updates continuously rather than monthly.