Brighton Letting Agent HMO Licensing Responsibilities

Many landlords in Brighton assume that paying a letting agent means the agent handles property licensing. In practice, the legal picture is more complicated — and misunderstanding it can leave you exposed to civil penalties of up to £40,000.

Who Can Be the Licence Holder?

A Brighton property licence must be held by a named individual or registered corporate entity with financial control and legal authority over the property. Under Section 263 of the Housing Act 2004, the key legal roles are:

• The person having control — the person who receives the rack-rent (usually the landlord or owner)
• The person managing — the individual or agency collecting rents and handling repair obligations

A letting agent can be named as the licence holder if they are the person managing the property, but this has to be set up deliberately during the application. It doesn't happen automatically because you have a management contract.

What Most Agency Contracts Actually Cover

Standard letting agency contracts come in tiers, and licensing is excluded from most of them:

Let-only service — the agent finds a tenant and handles referencing, then hands the tenancy back to you. Licensing is entirely your responsibility.

Rent collection service — the agent collects rent monthly and may handle basic tenant queries. Licensing applications, fee payments and compliance are still yours.

Full management service — the agent manages the property day to day, handles maintenance and may deal with licensing on your behalf. But check the contract carefully — many full management agreements explicitly exclude the council licence application as a standard service, or charge it as a separate fixed fee.

Local Brighton agencies that do handle licence applications typically charge between £250 and £600 plus VAT as a standalone administrative fee on top of the council's Part A and Part B fees. This is in addition to the ongoing management percentage (typically 10%–15% plus VAT of monthly rent).

Where Legal Liability Sits

This is the part that trips landlords up. Under Section 251 of the Housing Act 2004, criminal liability for operating without a required licence rests on the person having control of the property — not the agent.

If your property needs a licence and nobody has applied, the legal consequences fall on you as the owner, regardless of whether you've instructed an agent to manage it. The council's civil penalty (up to £40,000 per offence), the risk of criminal prosecution and the exposure to rent repayment orders of up to 24 months' gross rent all attach to the property owner.

An agent who agreed to handle the application and didn't may be liable to you under contract law — but that's a separate dispute between you and the agent, not a defence against council enforcement.

Agents as Named Licence Holders

When a letting agent is named as the licence holder on the application, they take on the ongoing compliance obligations: maintaining the gas safety certificate, keeping inspection logs, reporting changes within 28 days and meeting all licence conditions. The fit-and-proper person declaration applies to the agent as well.

This arrangement works well when you have a full-management agent you trust, but it creates a dependency — if you change agents, the licence cannot be transferred to the new agent or back to you. The existing licence terminates and a new application is needed.

The Accreditation Discount

There's one direct financial benefit to using an accredited agent: Brighton & Hove City Council offers a £75 discount on the licence fee if the managing agent named on the licence is a Propertymark associate member, or if the landlord is accredited by iHowz, the NRLA or Safeagent. This discount can be combined with the £75 EPC Band C discount for a maximum saving of £150 per licence.

Making the Decision

Whether you handle the licence application yourself or delegate to an agent, the core obligation is the same — the property must be licensed, the documents must be correct, and the fees must be paid on time.

Our Brighton & Hove Landlord Licensing guide covers the full application process for self-managing landlords, including the document checklist, portal walkthrough and fee calculator — so you can handle it confidently without paying agency markups.

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