Best Way to Check Which Nottingham Licence a Shared House Needs

If you rent out a shared house in Nottingham and need to know which licence it requires, the answer depends on two things: how many people live there and how many separate households they form. Get those two numbers right and the correct scheme follows directly. Get them wrong and you risk applying under the wrong scheme and losing the Part A fee — £290 for selective, £697 for an HMO licence — once administrative processing has commenced.

Nottingham City Council runs three property licensing schemes at the same time. They overlap, they use different fee structures, and the council's My Property NCC address checker sometimes returns "may apply" instead of a clear answer on ward boundaries. This is not a simple lookup.

The three schemes and how they split

Mandatory HMO licensing applies to any property occupied by five or more people forming two or more separate households. This is a national scheme under the Housing Act 2004 — it applies everywhere in England, not just Nottingham. If the property hits both thresholds (five people, two households), mandatory HMO licensing overrides everything else.

Additional HMO licensing (Scheme 3) applies citywide in Nottingham to properties occupied by three or four people forming two or more separate households. This catches the smaller shared houses that fall below the mandatory threshold. A three-bedroom flat shared by three unrelated tenants each on separate tenancy agreements is three people, three households — that is an additional HMO, not a selective licence.

Selective licensing (Scheme 2) covers privately rented properties in designated wards that are not already caught by either HMO scheme. If the property is a straightforward single-household let in a designated ward — one family, one couple, one individual — this is the scheme that applies.

The classification flowchart

Start with occupants, then work outward:

Step 1 — Count the people. How many individuals live in the property as their only or main residence? Include everyone: tenants, their partners, their children.

Step 2 — Count the households. Under Section 258 of the Housing Act 2004, a household includes a single person or members of the same family: spouses, civil partners, cohabiting partners, children, stepchildren, foster children, parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. Three friends sharing a flat are three households. A couple and their child are one household.

Step 3 — Apply the thresholds.

• Five or more people AND two or more households → Mandatory HMO
• Three or four people AND two or more households → Additional HMO (Scheme 3)
• Single household in a designated ward → Selective (Scheme 2)
• Single household outside a designated ward → No selective licence required (check HMO rules separately)

Step 4 — Check the ward. Selective licensing only applies in designated wards. The council publishes a designation map — use the My Property NCC tool to check the address. If the tool returns "may apply," cross-check Nottingham Insight Mapping's Housing and Property layers; if the boundary is still unclear, request written confirmation from the council's Housing Licensing team before letting.

Where landlords get it wrong

The most common mistake is counting tenants instead of households. Two couples sharing a two-bedroom flat is four people but only two households — that is an additional HMO, not a selective licence. Three students each on individual room agreements is three people, three households — also additional HMO. A couple renting a whole house is one household — selective, if the address is in a designated ward.

The second common mistake is assuming selective licensing is citywide. It is not. Scheme 2 covers designated wards only. A single-household let outside those wards does not need a selective licence from the city council (though it still needs to meet national safety standards and the upcoming PRS Database registration).

The third mistake is conflating licensing with planning permission. A property licence does not grant permission to convert a house into an HMO. Nottingham has a citywide Article 4 direction under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that removes permitted development rights for a change of use from a dwelling (C3) to a small HMO (C4). You may need both a licence and planning permission — and having one does not mean you have the other.

Who This Is For

• Landlords with a shared house in Nottingham who have received a council letter and are unsure which scheme applies
• Self-managing landlords re-letting a property to a different tenant configuration and wondering whether the licensing category has changed
• Accidental landlords who inherited a property with existing tenants and need to check compliance
• HMO landlords unsure whether a three-person or four-person let needs an additional or mandatory licence

Who This Is NOT For

• Landlords with a single-family let outside Nottingham's designated wards — no council licence applies
• Tenants trying to report an unlicensed landlord — Citizens Advice and Shelter are the right first step
• Landlords looking for legal advice on a particular dispute with the council

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the My Property NCC tool give a definitive answer?

Not always. The tool checks the address against the designation map, but ward boundaries cut across postcodes. If the tool returns "may apply," cross-check Nottingham Insight Mapping's Housing and Property layers. If the boundary remains unclear, request written confirmation from the council's Housing Licensing team before letting.

What if my tenants change and the household count crosses a threshold?

The licensing category follows the occupancy, not the tenancy agreement. Recheck the HMO thresholds when occupants change: three or four occupants from two or more households need an additional HMO licence; five or more need a mandatory HMO licence. Part 2 HMO licensing takes priority over Part 3 selective licensing, and a property cannot hold both licences at once.

Can a property need two licences at once?

No. A property cannot hold both an HMO licence and a selective licence at once. Part 2 HMO licensing takes priority over Part 3 selective licensing; mandatory HMO licensing applies at five or more occupants from two or more households, while Nottingham's additional scheme covers three or four.

Is it worth paying an agent to classify the property?

An agent can help, but the classification is not a judgment call — it is arithmetic (people × households × location). If you can count the occupants, identify the households and check the ward, you have the answer. A step-by-step licensing guide with a classification flowchart can walk you through the same process an agent would use, for a fraction of the cost.

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