What does a licence cost where you let?

There is no national fee. Each council sets its own under section 63(3) of the Housing Act 2004, and they are published in genuinely different shapes — a flat figure, a figure per letting or per bedroom, a banded scale, a split between application and grant, or a discount for accredited landlords. We hold and have dated the mandatory HMO fee for 194 of the 317 active licensing authorities in England and Wales, and we show each one in the council's own wording rather than flattening it into a single number.

Because we have not read and dated theirs, not because the licence is free. A fee we do not hold is shown as not held, with a link to the council's own licensing page. We would rather send you to the source than publish a figure we cannot stand behind, and we never render a missing fee as zero.

No — those are separate schemes with separate fees. Mandatory HMO licensing is national law and applies wherever the property qualifies. Selective and additional licensing are designated locally, cover defined areas, run for a maximum of five years and carry their own fees. This page shows all three where we hold them.

That we have not confirmed the council's position, and it is deliberately not the same as "no scheme". A blank in our table is an absence of information, never evidence of absence. Where a council has told us it operates no scheme and we hold the wording that says so, the page says "not in force" instead.

Every council carries the date its record was last verified or last changed, shown beside the result. Fees typically move with the council's annual fees and charges review, so check the council's own page before you pay — the link is on every result.