Hammersmith and Fulham Landlord Licensing — Your Application Guide

You know you need a licence. You just can't work out which one — or where to start.

Hammersmith and Fulham runs three overlapping property licensing schemes at the same time — selective licensing on 24 designated streets, additional HMO licensing borough-wide for three or more unrelated occupants, and mandatory HMO licensing for five or more — and the council's information is spread across separate web pages, designation orders, statutory guidance PDFs and a portal with a known address-lookup bug. The penalty for getting it wrong is a civil financial penalty of up to £40,000 per offence, or a Rent Repayment Order where your tenant claims back up to 24 months of rent.

You've probably spent an evening trying to work out whether your property on Fulham Road needs a selective licence, whether three sharers in a flat off Shepherd's Bush Road trigger the additional HMO scheme, what "Part 1" and "Part 2" fees actually mean, and whether you can get a discount for holding NRLA accreditation. The answers exist — but nobody has put them in one place, in order, with the portal workaround spelled out.

The LBHF Licensing Route Map

This guide is a complete route map through Hammersmith and Fulham's three licensing schemes — from checking whether your address sits on one of the 24 selective streets to tracking the licence conditions through to the June 2027 scheme expiry. It replaces the hours of cross-referencing council pages with a single step-by-step reference you can print and work through.

It is not legal advice, not a council publication, and not connected with any government body. It is an independent guide that organises the public rules into the order you actually need them.

Which licence? — answered with a street-and-occupancy decision matrix

A structured decision matrix that checks two things: whether your property sits on one of the 24 designated selective streets (Askew Road, Fulham Road, North End Road, Uxbridge Road and twenty more — all listed), and how many unrelated occupants share the property. Single-family let on a selective street? Selective licence. Three unrelated sharers anywhere in the borough? Additional HMO. Five or more? Mandatory HMO. The matrix covers the Section 257 converted-block test and the exemptions. No more guessing which scheme to start with.

The portal glitch — and how to get past it

LBHF's online licensing portal has a live technical fault: the "lookup postcode" feature corrupts address fields, and applications submitted with corrupted data stall or get rejected — forfeiting the non-refundable Part 1 fee (£377.50 for selective and additional licences, £414 for mandatory). The guide walks through every portal screen with the manual-entry workaround noted at each address step, so you complete the application correctly the first time.

Every document, in the order the portal asks for it

Gas Safety Certificate (CP12), Electrical Installation Condition Report with no outstanding C1 or C2 codes, Fire Risk Assessment for HMOs, measured floor plans showing room areas in square metres against LBHF's minimum standards (6.51 m² single occupancy, 10.22 m² double), and the Fit and Proper Person disclosure — laid out in a document-preparation checklist so you can assemble everything before you open the portal. Includes practical guidance on drawing hand-drawn floor plans to council standards without CAD software.

Fees, Part 1/Part 2 split, and every discount you can claim

The full fee structure for all three schemes — the £755 selective and additional HMO fee (split 50/50 between Part 1 and Part 2), the £1,656 mandatory HMO fee (25% Part 1, 75% Part 2), the £80 NRLA/LLAS accreditation discount, the £50 Charter discount, and the refund rules if an application is refused. The guide calculates your net fee after discounts so you know the exact amount before you pay.

Article 4 and planning permission — the parallel requirement nobody warns you about

A borough-wide Article 4 Direction has been in effect since April 2021, so converting a C3 dwellinghouse to a C4 small HMO (three to six occupants) needs express planning permission — and seven or more occupants needs Sui Generis permission. A licensing approval does not grant planning approval. The guide explains when planning permission runs alongside the licensing requirement, and what happens if you have one but not the other.

Licence conditions and the June 2027 timeline

What the council expects for the life of the licence: annual gas safety renewals, EICR cycles, smoke and CO alarm testing, waste disposal rules, minimum room sizes, tenant reference logs, and the difference between a five-year grant and a restricted two-year term. All three designation orders expire on 4 June 2027 — the guide explains the renewal timeline so you're ready before the current cycle ends.

Enforcement: what actually happens if you let without a licence

Civil penalties of up to £40,000 per offence under the Housing Act 2004, prosecution with unlimited fines, Rent Repayment Orders of up to 24 months' rent (for offences committed from May 2026 under the Renters' Rights Act reforms), invalid Section 21 notices on unlicensed properties, and banning orders — explained plainly, with what constitutes a statutory defence and what doesn't.

Who this is for

• Private landlords with a rented home or shared house in Hammersmith and Fulham who need to work out whether the property needs a licence, which one, and how to apply.
• Small or accidental landlords self-managing one or two properties who want to handle the application themselves instead of paying a compliance agency £300–£600 on top of the council fee.
• Landlords whose letting agent handles the application but who want an independent checklist — because the licence holder, not the agent, is legally responsible for the declarations and the ongoing conditions.
• Owners of flats in converted buildings who need to check whether the Section 257 additional HMO rules apply to their block.

Why not just use the council's website?

The council's website is free and you should use it — you need a portal account to submit the application anyway. What the council does not give you is a single reference that puts all three schemes side by side, lists the 24 selective streets, tells you which licence your property needs, walks you past the portal glitch, lays out the documents in the order the portal asks for them, calculates the fee after discounts, and tracks the conditions through to the next renewal. That is what this guide does.

Compared to a managed compliance service such as London HMO Compliance (£199 inspection + £350 application, before the council fee) or HMO Kit (£300–£500 quoted), this is a fraction of the cost — and you keep full control of your application and your data.

What you get

• The full guide — 14 chapters covering all three LBHF licensing schemes, the 24 selective streets, the application step by step, documents, fees and discounts, the portal workaround, floor plan standards, Article 4 planning, licence conditions, enforcement and the June 2027 renewal timeline (48 pages, PDF, print-ready).
• The dated compliance checklist — a 25-item summary of the steps, forms, fees and deadlines you can print and work through.
• Licence type decision flowchart — work through the occupancy and address questions to determine which of the three schemes applies, with all 24 selective streets listed.
• Fit and Proper Person preparation worksheet — organise the criminal history, housing enforcement, and company director details the portal asks for before you log in.
• Document readiness tracker — list every certificate required for your application type, record expiry dates, and check off uploads.
• Floor plan preparation guide — step-by-step instructions for measuring, drawing, and annotating floor plans to LBHF standards without CAD software.
• Fee calculation worksheet — calculate your exact total fee, identify your discount, and record Part 1 and Part 2 amounts.
• Post-grant compliance calendar — track ongoing conditions, certificate renewal dates, and the June 2027 scheme expiry in one printable overview.

All files cover the rules as at October 2026, with direct links to the council pages for rechecking.

Satisfaction guarantee

If the guide doesn't help, email [email protected] for a full refund, no time limit. No form to fill in, no questions.

Get started

Download the free checklist to see how the guide is structured. If you want the full route map — the street-and-occupancy matrix, the portal workaround, the fee worksheets and the condition tracker — get the complete guide for .