Leicester Selective Licensing Fees: Stage 1, Stage 2 and What's Non-Refundable

At £1,290 per property, Leicester has one of the highest selective licensing fees in England. Forum discussions on LandlordZONE regularly flag it as a sore point, and it is easy to see why when you manage multiple properties across the mapped areas. Here is exactly how the fee works, what is refundable and what is not.

The Two-Stage Fee Structure

Leicester City Council splits the selective licensing fee into two payments, following the legal framework set by the European Services Directive and affirmed in the Hemming v Westminster City Council case.

Stage 1: £1,032 — payable when you submit the application. This covers the council's processing costs: validating your documents, running background checks, completing the Fit and Proper Person assessment, conducting your initial property inspection (physical or virtual), providing compliance advice and preparing the draft licence.

Stage 2: £258 — payable when the council notifies you that the licence is ready to be granted. This covers the cost of reviewing any representations, issuing the final licence, maintaining the public register, ongoing enforcement monitoring and handling complaints.

The total comes to £1,290 per property. Each property needs its own application and its own fee — there is no portfolio discount.

Discounts

Leicester City Council offers one discount: for newly acquired properties. If you purchased the property within the previous six months (verified through your HM Land Registry title register), you qualify for a reduced application fee. The council does not publish the exact discount amount on its main pages, so contact [email protected] to confirm before applying.

The council's current fee guidance lists the new-owner discount but does not list a separate discount for NRLA membership or DASH accreditation. DASH Services (Decent and Safe Homes) provides regional accreditation for East Midlands landlords; contact the council before applying if you expect accreditation to affect your fee.

What Is Non-Refundable?

This is where landlords frequently get caught out. The Stage 1 fee is non-refundable in most scenarios once the application has been submitted and the council has started processing it.

Specifically, you lose the £1,032 Stage 1 payment if:

• You withdraw the application during processing
• The council refuses the application (for example, you fail the Fit and Proper Person test or the property has serious disrepair)
• You sell the property while the application is in progress — the licence cannot be transferred, and it terminates on sale
• Planning permission is refused for HMO use — licensing and planning are separate legal processes, and a planning refusal does not entitle you to a licensing fee refund

The only scenario where Stage 1 is refundable is when the council confirms the property was never inside the designated boundary in the first place (an application made in error) or where a duplicate application was submitted by mistake.

Stage 2 is only charged when the licence is ready to be granted, so if the application is refused or withdrawn before that point, you never incur the £258.

How This Compares

For context, mandatory HMO licensing in Leicester costs a flat £900 per property. Some neighbouring councils charge less for selective licensing — Charnwood, for instance, does not currently run a scheme — but Leicester's scheme is a unitary authority programme covering a city with a large private rented sector.

The fee is a fraction of what you would pay for alternatives: NRLA membership runs £125 per year (without Leicester-specific guidance), their licensing partner charges £295–£425 plus VAT per application on top of the council fee, and local letting agencies typically bundle licence handling into full management contracts at 10–15% of rent plus VAT.

The Landlord Licensing in Leicester guide includes a fee calculator worksheet and walks through the full payment staging process so you know exactly when each payment is due and what it covers.

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