Five questions, no sign-up. Your legal requirements for the address — and whether a licence applies, read from your council's own designation.
All 318 councils in England and Wales. 87 operate a discretionary scheme. Where we have not established a position, we say so.
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A council-level answer is a starting point, not a conclusion. Here is what sits behind the one you get.
A general model answers from what has been written about your council. We answer from what your council actually designated — with the date and the wards — and where we have not established it, we say so instead of guessing.
We use the same models you do. We have not trained anything. The difference is entirely in what we point them at, and in what we refuse to let them say.
We checked all 318 councils by hand. Nineteen were wrong.
It depends on the address, not the town. A property let to five or more people forming two or more households needs a mandatory HMO licence anywhere in England and Wales. Beyond that, a licence is required only where your council has designated selective or additional licensing over that specific area — 87 of the 318 councils we track operate at least one such scheme, and most cover part of the council area rather than all of it.
Count households, not people. Three or more people forming two or more households who share a kitchen, bathroom or toilet make the property an HMO. Five or more means a mandatory licence, nationally. Three or four means a licence only where the council has designated additional licensing — which is what this check tells you.
Yes. Five questions, no account, no card. You get the full requirement list for the address with the legislation behind each item, and the council's licensing position. We email you the report if you want it kept.
We say so. We have not established a discretionary licensing position for 178 of the 318 councils in England and Wales, and those pages state that plainly rather than rendering a negative. An absence of information is not evidence that no scheme exists, and treating it as one is how a landlord ends up letting unlicensed.
You can, and it will answer fluently. The problem is the source: a general model answers from what has been written about your council, not from what your council designated. We read the designation itself — the date, the wards, the section of the Housing Act it was made under — and where we have not established a council's position we say so rather than guessing. We checked all 318 councils by hand and found nineteen published positions that were wrong.
We use the same models you do and we have not trained anything. What differs is grounding: the models are pointed at councils' own designation notices and at the legislation, and they are not permitted to state a date, fee or area that does not appear in the source document. Where the source says nothing, the answer is that we do not know.
Three things. It does not know when something changes — Croydon designated a new scheme on 25 March 2026 and Salford's additional scheme lapsed on 19 July with no renewal published, and we caught both. It has no memory of your properties, so it cannot know your gas certificate expires in November unless you retell it every time. And it will not be wrong in a way you can check: we cite the instrument, so you can verify any claim we make.
We track all 318 councils in England and Wales. Councils we publish a position for are re-checked on a rolling schedule, councils with a live consultation are checked twice a week, and a weekly integrity job flags any record that contradicts itself or has gone stale. Every council page shows the source document and the date we last verified it.
Information tool, not legal advice.