Nottingham Landlord Licensing Guide — Selective, Additional and HMO

Nottingham keeps your Part A fee if you apply under the wrong scheme. Most landlords don't find that out until the council rejects the application.

Nottingham City Council runs three property licensing schemes at the same time — selective licensing across designated wards, additional HMO licensing citywide for 3–4 person shared houses, and mandatory HMO licensing for properties with five or more occupants. The schemes overlap, the fees are split into two stages, and the council's address checker sometimes returns "may apply" on ward boundaries instead of a clear answer. If you submit under the wrong scheme or with an expired document, the council refuses the application, keeps the non-refundable Part A fee — £290 for selective, £697 for an HMO licence — and you start again from scratch.

All of this information is published on nottinghamcity.gov.uk. The problem is that it is scattered across separate pages for each scheme, buried in PDF fee schedules that mix legacy figures with current rates, and split between council portal pages that offer no pre-application preparation. A landlord trying to work out whether a three-person let needs an additional HMO licence or a selective licence has to cross-reference the designation notice, count households under the Housing Act 2004 definition, check the ward map, look up the right fee tier, assemble the documents in the order the portal expects, and then complete a live application session where one missed field triggers a £47 chasing charge.

The Nottingham Licensing Pre-Flight System: check, prepare, apply — in that order

This guide is not a summary of licensing law. It is a pre-flight system — a single, dated reference that organises all three Nottingham schemes into a step-by-step process you work through offline, before you open the My Property NCC portal. You classify your property using the decision flowchart, assemble every required document against the audit checklist, record room dimensions, calculate fees with the accreditation discount factored in, and prepare your application answers on paper — so that when you log in, you are copying from a completed worksheet, not researching in a live session.

You get a 47-page guide covering all three licensing schemes, a 2-page dated compliance checklist, and seven printable worksheets — licensing route decision, document audit, room measurements, fee payment log, compliance log, renewal tracker and agency communication log — in one download.

What is inside

• Three-step property classification flowchart — start with the number of occupants and households, then check whether the address falls in a selective licensing ward, to identify which of the three schemes applies without guessing or paying for the wrong one
• Full selective licensing walkthrough (Scheme 2) — the designated wards, the Part A / Part B fee split, the accredited and standard rates, and what happens at each stage of the application from submission to licence grant
• Additional HMO licensing walkthrough (Scheme 3) — how the 3–4 person household test works citywide, the higher fee structure, and the extra room dimension requirements that catch landlords who assume it is the same as selective
• Mandatory HMO licensing — the 5-or-more occupant threshold, the scaled fee tiers, and the national minimum room sizes that apply on top of Nottingham's local requirements
• Pre-submission document checklist — Gas Safety CP12, 5-year EICR, EPC, floor plans with minimum dimensions (6.51 m² single, 10.22 m² double), and accreditation proof — with a verification worksheet so every file is current and correctly formatted before you upload
• Fee calculator with accreditation discount — every Part A and Part B amount for each scheme at the standard, accredited and less-compliant rates, plus a worked example showing how a £65 DASH course unlocks a net saving of £126 on a single selective licence
• The Article 4 planning trap explained — why a property licence does not grant planning permission to convert to an HMO, and what to check before you change the household arrangement in Nottingham
• Fit-and-proper person test — what the council checks, what disqualifies an applicant, and how to prepare a management declaration when you use a letting agent
• Licence conditions and inspection preparation — what Nottingham requires after the licence is issued, from tenant references and written repair policies to PAT testing and waste management, with a compliance log template
• Enforcement and penalties — civil penalties up to £40,000, Rent Repayment Orders covering up to 24 months of rent, prosecution, and the rogue landlord database — what triggers each and how to stay clear
• Tribunal appeals — the route to challenge a refusal, a licence condition or a civil penalty through the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), including the 28-day deadline
• PRS Database and Renters' Rights Act cross-reference — how the upcoming national landlord register (registration window 15 February to 14 May 2027) and Renters' Rights Act changes interact with Nottingham's local licensing, so you can prepare for both at once

Who this is for

• Self-managing landlords in Nottingham with one or two properties who want to apply for their own licence without paying an agent £180+ to submit it
• Accidental landlords who inherited a property or kept a former home in Nottingham and have just found out they need a licence
• Landlords who received a council enforcement letter and need to understand what scheme applies to their property and how to respond
• HMO landlords unsure whether a three-person or four-person let needs an additional HMO licence, a mandatory HMO licence or a selective licence
• Landlords using a letting agent who want an independent audit tool to verify the agent submitted the right application with the right documents
• Landlords with properties near Nottingham's borders who need to confirm whether the property falls within the city council's licensing area or a neighbouring authority

Why not free resources?

Every designation notice, fee schedule and application portal is published free on nottinghamcity.gov.uk. We link to all of them.

The problem is not access — it is assembly, sequence and confidence. The selective licensing page is separate from the additional HMO page. The fee schedule is a downloadable PDF that blends legacy rates with current figures. The MyProperty address checker returns ambiguous results on ward boundaries. The portal offers no pre-application checklist and no way to verify whether your documents meet the required dimensions and formats before you submit.

A landlord trying to work out whether a three-person let in Radford needs an additional HMO licence or a selective licence has to cross-reference the designation notice, check the ward map, count occupants and households under the statutory definition, look up the right fee tier, compare it against the other scheme's fees, then assemble documents in the order the portal expects — all before opening a live application session. One mistake and the Part A fee is gone.

The pre-flight system puts all three schemes in a single document, in execution order, with worksheets you complete offline so the portal session is a data-entry exercise, not a research project.

Dated to the rules it describes

Landlord licensing in Nottingham changes when designations expire and are renewed. Selective Licensing Scheme 2 runs to 30 November 2028; Additional HMO Scheme 3 runs to 31 December 2028. The guide carries a clear "rules as at October 2026" date and separates the current schemes from upcoming national changes — including the PRS Database registration window and the Renters' Rights Act phases — so you can see at a glance which rules apply now and which are on the horizon.

Full refund, no time limit

If the guide does not help you get your Nottingham property licensed correctly, email [email protected] and we will refund you in full. No form, no deadline, no questions.

The free checklist gives you the steps. The full guide gives you the pre-flight system — worksheets, decision flowcharts, fee calculators, document verification and a step-by-step portal walkthrough — everything a self-managing landlord needs to get the right Nottingham licence first time, without losing a Part A fee to a preventable error.