Terms of use

Property Licence is an independent project operated by Ian Nuttall as a sole trader in the United Kingdom. It is not a council, not a government body, and not affiliated with any housing association, letting agency, accreditation scheme or property platform.

Contact for anything in these terms: [email protected].

Property Licence is an informational checker that maps UK postcodes to the licensing rules the local council operates. It shows whether a property is likely to need a selective licence, an additional HMO licence or a mandatory HMO licence based on the council's published rules and the property setup you describe.

The site does not issue licences. It does not process licence applications. It does not represent the council in any way. The licence itself can only come from the council the property sits in.

Information on Property Licence is general information about property licensing in England. It is not legal advice and you should not rely on it for any decision that carries real money or legal risk. Licensing rules are technical, change over time, and have edge cases that this site cannot answer for your specific property.

Before applying for a licence, paying a fee, ending a tenancy, buying or selling a property, or responding to a council enforcement notice, confirm the position with the council's licensing team or with a solicitor.

We work hard to keep the data accurate. Council licensing pages are re-checked on a schedule, and we update the listing when anything material changes. The "last checked" date on each council page is the day we last confirmed the data against the council's own pages.

Even with that, there are gaps. Some council pages are hard to parse. Some councils announce changes before publishing them in machine-readable form. Some designations have edge cases the published notice does not fully describe. Treat the result as a starting point that should be confirmed with the council before any decision.

If you spot something wrong on a council page, please email [email protected] with the council name and what you think is incorrect. Corrections usually go in within a few days.

Postcode and council mapping comes from the Office for National Statistics National Statistics Postcode Lookup. Council licensing data comes from each council's published licensing pages, public designation notices, application pages and fee schedules. Council boundary data comes from ONS local authority district boundaries published as open data.

Property Licence does not access any data that is not publicly published by the council or by another official body. We do not receive feeds from councils, we are not authorised by any council, and any inference we draw from the published data is our own.

You can use Property Licence for any lawful purpose connected with checking property licensing rules, including for your own properties, properties you are buying or selling, properties you let on behalf of someone else, or properties you are advising on.

What you may not do: automated scraping at a rate that interferes with the service, attempts to reverse-engineer the checker for commercial resale, use of the data in ways that suggest the council or Property Licence endorses an outcome they have not endorsed, or any activity that violates UK law.

We reserve the right to rate-limit, block, or remove access for anyone whose use degrades the service for other users.

The site design, written content, code and curated data structure are owned by Property Licence and made available for personal and professional use on the site itself. Re-publishing wholesale extracts of our written content elsewhere requires written permission.

Council source material we reference belongs to the respective council. ONS boundary and postcode data is published under the Open Government Licence. Where we display data sourced from those parties, the underlying licence applies.

To the extent permitted by UK law, Property Licence is provided "as is" and without warranty. We do not warrant that the data is complete, accurate, current or fit for any specific purpose, and we do not accept liability for losses, costs or fines arising from reliance on the information on this site.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded under UK law.

Your route to certainty is the council's own licensing team. If the council's position differs from what you read here, the council's position is the one that counts.

Council pages link out to the council's own website, application portal, and public register. We do not control what those external sites contain, and a link from Property Licence is not an endorsement. The relevant council, government body or third party is responsible for what is on their own site.

We may update these terms when the service changes or when the law requires. The "last updated" date at the top of the page shows the most recent revision. Material changes will be flagged on the homepage for at least 14 days after the update.

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute relating to your use of the site is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.