What a council expects from an HMO
A house in multiple occupation is licensed either under mandatory licensing — five or more people forming two or more households — or under an additional or selective scheme run by the borough, and London boroughs run a lot of them. The licence conditions vary by council but the fire evidence rarely does: a written fire risk assessment, an alarm system of the right grade and category for the layout, fire doors to the letting rooms and risk rooms, protected escape routes, emergency lighting where the escape route is long or windowless, and records of testing. Alongside that sit the room size rules under the Housing Act 2004 as amended, amenity standards for kitchens and bathrooms by number of occupants, and the management regulations. Applications get refused or delayed far more often for missing evidence than for genuinely dangerous buildings.
- Written fire risk assessment covering the whole house
- Alarm system of appropriate grade and category, with test records
- Fire doors to letting rooms, kitchens and risk rooms
- Protected escape route to a final exit
- Emergency lighting where required by the layout
- Room sizes and amenity provision against licence conditions
- Valid EPC
How we assess the fire precautions
Shared houses are assessed differently from single dwellings because the people in them are effectively strangers sharing an escape route. We follow the LACORS housing fire safety guidance, which is the benchmark councils use: the alarm system is judged on grade and category against the number of storeys and the layout, not on whether alarms are simply present; the escape route is judged on whether it is protected for its full length, including the cupboard under the stairs and the door to the cellar; each letting room and each risk room is judged on the door, its closer, its seals and its gaps; and the kitchen gets particular attention because it is where shared-house fires begin. We also look at how the house is actually lived in — where people cook, where bikes and scooters are charged, whether a fire door has been propped open by everybody who uses it.
The room-by-room schedule
Every letting room, kitchen, bathroom, hallway and stair is recorded on its own line: door type and condition, closer, seals, gaps, alarm type and position, escape route from that room, room dimensions, and any defect with the specific remedy. Photographs are attached to each line. This is the document that turns a licence application from an argument into a submission, and it is also what a contractor prices from. It carries forward to the next inspection, so you can see what has changed between rounds.
What we most often find in London HMOs
Interlinked alarms of the wrong grade — battery alarms where a mains-wired Grade D or a Grade A system is needed for the number of storeys; letting room doors that are ordinary internal doors with an intumescent strip glued on; self-closers removed by tenants who found them annoying; escape routes running through a kitchen; cupboards under the stairs full of stored belongings and unprotected; and a cellar door that is neither fire-rated nor kept shut. Almost all of it is fixable within a few hundred pounds, and almost all of it is what an officer will pick up if you submit without a survey first.
Price, timing and the licence deadline
The package starts at £299 for a small shared house and is priced on the number of letting rooms and storeys. Where a licence application, a renewal deadline or a council inspection date is fixed, we can attend same day or next day across London and issue the pack within 24 hours. If the council has already served a schedule of works, bring it to us and we will structure the assessment so it answers each item directly, which is considerably more useful than a generic report submitted alongside it.
