Brighton & Hove Landlord Licensing — Every Scheme, One Guide

Three schemes. One property. Zero room for error.

Brighton and Hove runs selective licensing in four wards, additional HMO licensing across the entire city, mandatory HMO licensing nationwide — and a proposed expansion that was paused by a legal challenge before it took effect. Each scheme has its own eligibility rules, its own fee structure, and its own set of portal uploads. Get it wrong and you risk forfeiting the non-refundable Part A fee, or worse — operating without a licence carries civil penalties of up to £40,000 and rent repayment orders stretching back 24 months.

Most landlords piece the rules together from half a dozen council web pages, forum threads, and letting agent blogs. Each source covers one scheme or one aspect — nobody lays out the complete picture in the order you actually need it.

The Brighton Licensing Compliance Toolkit

This is a single reference that takes you from "does my property need a licence?" through to "application submitted, conditions understood, renewal date logged." It covers every scheme Brighton and Hove City Council operates for private rented homes, dated to the rules as at November 2026, with the paused Central Hove and Regency expansion tracked separately so you know exactly where things stand.

The guide is structured around the decisions a self-managing landlord actually has to make — which scheme applies, what the portal asks for, how much the fee is and when each part is due, what discounts are available and how to evidence them — rather than the order the council's website happens to present them.

What's inside

• Scheme decision sequence — answer four questions about your property (occupant count, household structure, storey count, ward) and the guide tells you which licence you need. Covers the edge cases that trip people up: single-storey flats with three sharers, Section 257 converted buildings, and properties sitting on ward boundaries.
• Ward-by-ward breakdown — the four active selective licensing wards mapped out, plus the paused Regency and Central Hove designation, so you're not relying on postcodes that don't align with ward boundaries.
• Part A / Part B fee calculator — full fee tables for selective (£740 standard), additional HMO (£883 single tenancy / £1,127 separate tenancies), worked discount examples showing how the £75 EPC and £75 accreditation discounts stack, and the 10-working-day Part B payment window that forfeits your entire application if you miss it.
• Pre-upload document audit list — every file the Mendix portal asks for (gas safety certificate, EICR, PAT, EPC, floor plan with annotated room sizes in m², tenancy agreements, inspection records, fire alarm certificates for HMOs), checked against the council's acceptance criteria so you don't discover a missing upload after Part A is paid.
• Floor plan sketch guide — how to draw a compliant layout sketch yourself, with the annotations the council expects (room use labels, ceiling heights, usable floor area in square metres, fire safety equipment locations), so you don't need to hire a surveyor.
• Licence conditions and inspections — what the council expects once you hold a licence: property standards, gas and electrical testing schedules, the DASH HHSRS inspection protocol, and what triggers a compliance visit.
• Article 4 planning interlock — why an HMO licence and Article 4 planning permission are separate legal requirements, what happens if you have one without the other, and how to check whether your property needs both.
• Enforcement and penalties — the current penalty framework (£40,000 civil penalties, 24-month rent repayment orders, £840 late-application surcharge), the fit-and-proper person test, and how the Renters' Rights Act 2025 changes affect Brighton landlords.
• PRS Database alignment — the South East region registration window (March–June 2027) requires your local licence number, so getting licensed now is a prerequisite for the national register.
• Dated compliance checklist — a printable checklist covering every step from address check to portal receipt, with spaces for dates, reference numbers, and renewal reminders.

Who it's for

Self-managing private landlords in Brighton and Hove — whether you own one flat in Kemptown, a terraced house in Whitehawk, or a shared property in Moulsecoomb — who want to handle the licensing application themselves without paying an agent £300–£600 plus VAT to do it for you.

The guide is especially useful if you've just inherited a property, recently moved out of a former home and started letting it, or discovered that a change in your tenants' living arrangements (a partner moving in, a friend joining the household) has pushed your property into a different licensing scheme.

Why not piece it together yourself?

You could. The council publishes the rules, the fees, and the portal link across several web pages. But the official guidance is written for all of England's licensing framework at once — it doesn't walk you through the specific combination of schemes that applies in Brighton and Hove, or explain how the paused expansion affects you today. The application portal itself offers no pre-flight checklist: you only discover a missing document after you've paid the non-refundable Part A fee and hit an upload error.

Letting agents will do the entire application for you, but the standalone processing fee starts at £250 plus VAT — and the statutory liability remains yours regardless. PRSCheck and LandlordReady can tell you whether your postcode sits in a licensing zone, but neither helps you prepare the actual application documents.

The guide costs less than a single agent's processing fee and covers every scheme in one place, in the order you need it, dated to the rules it describes.

Satisfaction guarantee

Full refund, no time limit. If the guide doesn't help you, email [email protected] and you'll get your money back.

Get started

Download the free Brighton and Hove Landlord Licensing Checklist to see the steps at a glance — or get the full toolkit for the 44-page guide plus 7 printable worksheets: licence decision worksheet, document audit list, floor plan sketch guide, fee and discount calculator, compliance and renewal diary, property inspection log, and the dated compliance checklist.

The guide is — a one-time purchase, not a subscription.