We are a repairs and refurbishment contractor, not a licensing consultancy, and this page is written on that basis. What we can usefully tell you is how HMO licensing reshapes the physical work in a property: the amenities, the fire precautions, the electrics, the gas, and the sequencing. What we will not do is tell you whether your property needs a licence, what it costs, or how long the council takes, because those are exactly the details that vary, change, and must come from Westminster City Council directly.
Take that seriously. Licensing regimes are among the most locally variable parts of housing law in England. Scheme boundaries, designations, criteria and conditions differ between boroughs and are revised. If you read a number on a contractor's website and act on it, that is on you and on them. Check with the council.
The shape of the thing
A house in multiple occupation is, broadly, a property occupied by people from more than one household who share facilities such as a kitchen or bathroom. Some HMOs require a licence under a national mandatory scheme. Separately, local authorities have powers to designate additional or selective licensing schemes covering other categories of property, in all or part of their area.
Whether any of that catches your property in Westminster depends on the property, the occupancy, and the schemes in force at the time — including whether a designation covers your street. That last point matters: schemes can be borough-wide or geographically limited, and they can be introduced, renewed or allowed to lapse. Ask the council about your specific address rather than reasoning from a general description.
Get this wrong and the consequences are serious — they can include enforcement, financial penalties, and effects on your ability to recover possession. We are not going to quote figures. Take proper advice if there is any doubt at all.
Why a builder is writing about licensing at all
Because licensing is, in practice, largely a specification for building work.
Licences carry conditions. Those conditions typically bear on the things that determine whether a property is safe and adequate for the number of people in it: fire detection and escape, the number and standard of kitchens and bathrooms, room sizes and use, heating, electrical safety, gas safety, and management arrangements. When a landlord discovers what a licence requires, the discovery usually converts into a scope of works.
So the sequence that works is: establish with the council what applies, get the requirements in writing, then price and programme the works. The sequence that fails is: refurbish the property, apply, and find that the layout you have just finished does not satisfy the conditions.
What licensing typically drives on site
Fire safety and detection
This is usually the largest single element and the one with the biggest impact on a period building. Detection systems in shared properties are a different proposition from a couple of domestic smoke alarms — they are designed to a standard, they are wired, and they are commissioned and certificated. Getting cable through a Georgian or Victorian building without wrecking the fabric requires planning, and in a listed or conservation-area property it requires care about where things are fixed and how they are routed. Our guides to listed building consent and conservation area rules cover the fabric side of that.
Escape routes, doors and their integrity often come into it too. This is specialist territory and the requirements are set by the authority and by fire safety guidance, not by us. What we can say from the site side is that it is intrusive, it interacts with every ceiling and door in the building, and it should be first in the programme, not last.
Amenities: kitchens and bathrooms
Shared properties are typically expected to have amenities proportionate to the number of occupiers. In Central London stock this is where things get physically difficult, because adding a bathroom to a mansion flat or a converted terrace means finding drainage.
Soil stacks are where they are. Moving waste in a flat above ground floor means falls, boxing, and often the freeholder's agreement — most leases require consent for alterations affecting soil and waste pipes, and you will need to confirm the position in your own lease. See our guide to freeholder consent for a bathroom refurbishment and the practical detail on our bathroom refurbishment page. Any new bathroom also engages Building Regulations — ventilation, sanitation and hot water, and electrics — as set out in building regulations for bathrooms.
The blunt version: in a lot of Westminster buildings, the number of bathrooms you can add is decided by the drainage geometry and the lease, not by what you would like.
Electrical
The five-yearly EICR duty applies to rented homes generally under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, and a licensed property may have further conditions attached on top. A shared property also loads the installation harder than a single-family let: more appliances, more sockets, more demand, more wear. Older boards in this stock frequently cannot take it. Our guides to EICR landlord requirements and landlord electrical safety standards explain what the inspection judges, and our electrical work starts from £80.
Gas
The annual gas safety check applies under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, and the record matters more in a shared property because there are more people entitled to it. See gas safety certificates in London. Access is also harder: multiple occupiers, multiple schedules, one engineer.
Heating, room use and layout
Licence conditions commonly reach into things landlords think of as design decisions: whether a room can be used as a bedroom at all, how it is heated, and how the property is managed day to day. That is worth knowing before you draw a layout, because a room that fails on its dimensions or its means of escape is not a room you can let, however nicely it is finished.
In Central London the pressure runs the other way from most of the country. The stock has generous ceiling heights and awkward plans — long corridors, rooms opening off rooms, half-landings, light wells, internal rooms with no external wall. An internal room with no window is a ventilation problem and often an escape problem, and neither is solved by a smaller extract fan. If a scheme depends on an internal room working, resolve that with the council first. Everything downstream of that decision is expensive to undo.
The Westminster building stock problem
Nothing about this borough makes HMO work easy.
The stock is old, much of it is listed or in a conservation area, and a large proportion of it is leasehold flats within blocks. That means three separate permission questions can run in parallel: the licensing requirements from the council, the freeholder's consent for alterations under the lease, and — where the building is listed or the works affect the exterior — the planning and heritage position.
Those three do not talk to each other. The council's housing team and the planning team are different functions. Your freeholder is not obliged to care that a licence condition requires something; a lease does not bend because the council has a scheme. Landlords occasionally find themselves holding a requirement they cannot lawfully implement without a consent that has not been granted. If that is your position, get advice early — from the council, from the managing agent, and if necessary from a solicitor.
Many freeholds in and around Marylebone, Mayfair, Fitzrovia and the Paddington and Bayswater streets sit with large estates and long-established freeholders, and their approach to alterations, sharing and occupancy varies considerably. Many leases also restrict use, sharing or subletting. Read the lease before you assume a licensing route is open to you at all — our guide to a licence to alter in a mansion block describes how that consent process usually runs.
How to approach it in the right order
- Confirm with Westminster City Council whether your specific address needs a licence, and under which scheme.
- Get the applicable conditions and standards in writing before designing anything.
- Read the lease for restrictions on use, sharing, alterations and soil pipes.
- Establish the heritage position — listed, conservation area, or neither.
- Only then draw the layout and price the works.
- Programme fire safety and drainage first; they dictate everything downstream.
- Keep every certificate: detection, electrical, gas. In a licensed property the paperwork is part of the asset.
What we do
We carry out the physical work — plumbing, electrical, bathrooms, refurbishment and ongoing maintenance — with set prices and a fixed quote before we start. In shared properties we will work to a written specification you have confirmed with the council, and we will tell you plainly where a requirement collides with the drainage, the fabric, or your lease, rather than building something that will not do the job.
We do not advise on licensing itself and we will not guess at fees, timescales or conditions. That comes from Westminster City Council, from a housing solicitor, or from a licensing consultant. If you already know what the property needs, send us the schedule and we will price it. Agents managing licensed stock across several buildings may find our page for estate agents useful.
Nothing here is legal advice, and none of it is specific to your property. Verify everything with the council before you spend money.