Licensing standards, borough by borough
HMO standards vary by London borough. We survey the property against the licensing conditions that actually apply before pricing the works.
Kingston upon Thames, London KT2 6QW quotes@lianconstruction.co.uk
HMO compliance works
HMO Compliance Works London — Licensing Standards Met
Lian Construction brings London rental properties up to HMO licensing standard, covering fire separation, protected escape routes, room sizes and amenity requirements. We work with landlords and letting agents across the capital on both mandatory and additional licensing schemes, surveying the property first, then pricing and scheduling the works needed to meet the conditions your local authority will check on inspection. This covers everything from a single fire door replacement to a full room-by-room reconfiguration of a converted house.
Service overview
HMO compliance in London
Fire separation and escape routes
We upgrade walls, ceilings and doors to the fire resistance a protected escape route requires, and can fit fire doors and interlinked alarms as part of the same programme.
Room sizes and amenity provision
Under the mandatory HMO licensing conditions that apply nationally, a bedroom occupied by one person aged 10 or over needs a minimum floor area of 6.51 sqm, two adults sharing a room need 10.22 sqm, and a room used by a single child under 10 needs at least 4.64 sqm. These are the baseline figures under the mandatory conditions of licence regulations, but they are a floor, not a target. Boroughs such as Newham, Croydon and Waltham Forest run additional or selective licensing schemes covering far more of their private rented stock, and some apply amenity standards on top of the mandatory conditions, so we treat the specific scheme covering the property as the reference document rather than assuming the national minimum is the final word. Where an existing room falls short, the fix depends on what's next to it. A boxroom or deep alcove next door can sometimes be absorbed by removing a stud partition and rebuilding the wall in a new position, which is usually the cheapest route if the structure allows it. Where there's no room to borrow space from, we look at whether a smaller room could be repurposed as a bathroom or second kitchen instead of a bedroom, which changes the room count the licence is assessed against. Amenity ratios get checked with the same scrutiny. Most councils expect one kitchen for up to five sharing tenants and one bathroom or WC for every four to five, with a minimum number of cooking rings, an oven, a sink and adequate worktop space scaled to occupancy. Inspectors count fittings, not intentions, so a landing with a kettle and microwave won't be accepted as a second kitchen. We've fitted second kitchens and shower rooms into understairs voids and former coal stores, converted boxrooms into ensuites, and split oversized double rooms into two compliant singles with a new stud wall, skirting and door set to match. Getting the room count, sizes and amenity ratio agreed against the correct licensing scheme before work starts is what stops a landlord paying twice for partition changes once an inspecting officer measures the finished rooms. Ceiling height matters too, and it's the detail people miss most often. Where a room has a sloped ceiling, typically a loft conversion or an attic bedroom in a Victorian terrace, only the area with a ceiling height of at least 1.5 metres usually counts toward the minimum floor area, so a room that looks large on paper can measure short once the sloped sections are excluded. We check this with a laser measure against the actual usable footprint rather than the overall room dimensions on a floor plan. Storage and refuse provision come up less often but do get raised at some inspections, particularly where a conversion has removed a garden shed or coal store that tenants previously used, and we can build in a lockable external store or internal cupboard space as part of the same programme where the council's scheme expects it.
Electrics, gas and interlinked alarm systems
HMO licence conditions extend well beyond the building fabric into the property's electrical and gas installations, and these get checked alongside fire separation at both application and renewal. Councils generally expect a current Electrical Installation Condition Report showing no outstanding C1 or C2 faults, a valid annual Gas Safety Record for any gas appliances and flues, and a fire detection and alarm system that's mains-wired with battery back-up and interlinked across the whole property, typically specified to BS 5839-6 grade D LD2 or LD3 coverage depending on the layout and number of storeys. A grade D system means every alarm is powered from the mains with a tamper-proof standby battery, and LD2 coverage extends beyond just escape routes into rooms presenting the highest fire risk, usually kitchens and living rooms. We coordinate the electrical and alarm work alongside the fire separation and partition works rather than treating it as a separate visit, because running new alarm cabling between floors usually means lifting the same floorboards or opening the same ceiling voids needed for fire-stopping, and it's more efficient and less disruptive to tenants to do both in one pass through a room. Where an EICR flags an old rewirable fuse board, missing RCD protection, degraded cross-bonding or unearthed lighting circuits, which is common in properties that haven't been rewired since a 1980s or 1990s conversion, we bring in a qualified electrician to remedy those items alongside the room works rather than handing back a property with a partial fix that fails on the electrical side. Emergency lighting on escape routes is sometimes required for larger or more complex HMOs, particularly where a stairwell or corridor relies on borrowed light that's since been blocked by an internal alteration, and fire strategies for bigger properties can also call for heat detectors in kitchens rather than smoke detectors, since normal cooking activity would otherwise trigger false alarms. We flag any of this during the initial survey rather than after installation, because retrofitting battery packs, conduit or cabling into a ceiling that's already been boarded and skimmed costs considerably more than fitting it during the first pass through the property. Kitchen and bathroom extraction is another area that gets missed until an inspection picks it up. Building Regulations expect mechanical extraction ducted to external air in any kitchen and bathroom, not just an internal fan recirculating steam back into the room, and where a new kitchen or shower room is being added into an internal space with no external wall nearby, ducting it out can mean running it through a neighbouring room's void or up through a loft, which needs planning at the design stage rather than once tiling is finished. We also check portable appliance testing on any landlord-supplied white goods in shared kitchens, since PAT records are something inspecting officers can ask to see alongside the EICR and gas certificate.
What drives the cost of HMO compliance work
Pricing an HMO compliance job depends far more on how far the property is from standard than on its overall size. A property that only needs fire doors, interlinked alarms and some fire-stopping to ceiling and floor voids is a relatively contained job, and can often be costed and scheduled within a matter of weeks once survey and pricing are agreed. Where partition walls need to move to correct undersized rooms, or a bathroom or second kitchen needs to be added from scratch, costs rise quickly once plumbing, mechanical extraction, electrical first and second fix, plastering and matching the existing finish are all factored in. Structural changes add both cost and time for building control sign-off. Removing a load-bearing wall to reconfigure a floor and installing a steel beam to carry the load above, or altering a staircase to improve the escape route, both need calculations from a structural engineer and inspection at set stages, which extends the programme even where the physical work itself is quick. Older fire doors are rarely a straightforward swap: many original door openings in Victorian and Edwardian houses are undersized, out of square, or have settled over a century of movement, so fitting a certified FD30s door set often means adjusting the lining, and sometimes taking back a course or two of brickwork or building up the reveal, rather than dropping a new door into the existing frame. Access matters more than people expect. A mid-terrace property with no side access means materials, including plasterboard and fire-rated stud timber, have to go through the house, which slows the job compared with a property that has rear access or off-street parking directly outside. We also factor in whether tenants remain in situ, since working around an occupied property with notice periods and room-by-room access takes longer than a vacant one where several trades can work simultaneously. We survey the property first and price against the specific list of works the applicable licensing conditions require, rather than quoting a blanket day rate or a per-room average, because two outwardly similar terraced houses on the same street can need very different amounts of work depending on what's already been done to them, when they were last rewired, and how the loft and floor voids were left by previous alterations. Statutory costs sit alongside the building work itself and are worth budgeting for separately. A structural engineer's calculations for a steel beam, a building control application fee, and in some cases a party wall agreement with a neighbour if work touches a shared wall or foundation, can add a few hundred to a couple of thousand pounds before a single wall is opened up, depending on the scope. Scaffolding or a tower for external fire door work, cladding repairs above ground floor level, or access to a rear elevation without side access, is a further cost that's easy to overlook when comparing quotes that don't specify access equipment separately from labour and materials.
Common problems in London's older housing stock
Much of London's HMO stock is Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing converted into flats or bedsits decades ago, long before current fire separation standards existed, and the problems tend to repeat from house to house across boroughs. Lath-and-plaster ceilings, common on the original upper floors of these properties, don't provide anything like the fire resistance a protected escape route needs and usually have to be overboarded with fire-rated plasterboard or, where they're too far gone, taken down and replaced entirely. Timber floorboards with gaps between joists let fire, smoke and sound travel between storeys far faster than a fire strategy assumes, so we fire-stop these voids as standard wherever we open up a ceiling or floor on an escape route, using intumescent mastic and mineral wool packed between joists rather than just boarding over the gap. Houses converted into three-storey HMOs served by a single staircase are especially exposed, since that stair is the only escape route from the upper floors and every door opening onto it, bedroom doors included, needs to hold back fire for the required time. We often find these doors replaced at some point with standard internal doors that look similar but carry no fire rating, sometimes with the intumescent strips and cold smoke seals missing entirely, which is one of the most common reasons a previously licensed HMO fails at renewal. Ex-council flats and maisonettes converted into HMOs bring a different set of issues. Concrete cross-wall construction limits where new partitions can go structurally, but it usually gives you fire and sound separation between units for free, which isn't the case in a timber-framed Victorian conversion. Single-glazed metal-framed windows original to some 1960s and 1970s blocks can complicate means of escape if a bedroom relies on a window as a secondary exit, and solid concrete floors make alarm cable runs and any new plumbing routes more involved than lifting a timber floor. Solid-wall Victorian and Edwardian houses without a cavity also need rising or penetrating damp addressed before new plasterboard and skim goes up around a fire-separation upgrade, since boarding over a damp wall just traps the moisture behind a new surface and the fire-rated board itself can be compromised by ongoing dampness within a few years. Loft and mansard conversions added to a terrace to create an extra letting room bring their own escape route problems, since a loft bedroom is often the furthest point from the front door and depends entirely on the stair below being properly protected. Where a loft was converted some years ago under permitted development without a fully protected stair, we sometimes need to upgrade doors and linings on every floor below it, not just in the loft itself, to bring the whole escape route up to the standard the additional storey now demands. Cellar or basement conversions used as an extra bedroom raise a related issue: a below-ground room usually needs an independent means of escape, such as a window or hatch to a lightwell, rather than relying solely on the internal stair, and retrofitting that into an existing solid-wall cellar is one of the more involved jobs we take on.
Signs to look for
Do you need hmo compliance?
- Council has issued a licence renewal notice flagging fire doors or room sizes that no longer meet current standards.
- Property is a converted Victorian terrace with three or more storeys sharing a single staircase and no fire-rated bedroom doors.
- Bedrooms measure close to or under 6.51 square metres, which may fail the minimum room size check at licensing inspection.
- Smoke alarms are battery-only rather than mains-wired and interlinked, which most councils flag as a fail at inspection.
- Kitchen or bathroom is shared by more tenants than the borough's amenity ratio allows for that number of occupants.
- Fire doors have visible gaps around the frame, missing intumescent strips, or self-closers that don't fully latch shut.
- Loft, understairs or ceiling voids have visible gaps where pipework or cabling passes through without proper fire-stopping.
- Landlord has received an improvement notice or licence refusal citing specific building works needed before re-application.
How the work is handled
- Step 1Review borough HMO standards
- Step 2Survey the property against them
- Step 3Price and complete the required works
- Step 4Provide documentation for licensing
Coverage across London
Lian Construction is based in Kingston upon Thames and covers all 32 London boroughs plus the City of London for hmo compliance work.
Local coverage
HMO compliance in your borough
Dedicated hmo compliance pages for our priority London boroughs, with local landmarks, access notes and typical property types for each area.
Questions
Common hmo compliance questions
Do you know our council's HMO standards?
We review the published HMO standards for the relevant borough before quoting, since requirements differ across London.
Can you help with a full HMO conversion?
Yes. We can scope partition changes, fire separation, room sizes and amenities for a full HMO conversion project.
What's usually the biggest compliance gap you find in existing HMOs?
Fire separation is the most common issue: missing or degraded fire doors, unsealed penetrations through ceilings and walls, and escape routes that have been compromised by later alterations. Room sizes and amenity ratios can also fall short of current standards.
How long does it take to bring a non-compliant HMO up to standard?
It depends on the scale of the shortfall. A property needing fire doors, alarms and some fire-stopping can often be turned around in a matter of weeks, while a full conversion involving new partitions and room changes takes longer.
Can this work be done while tenants remain in the property?
In many cases yes, particularly for fire doors, alarms and fire-stopping, which we can schedule room by room with notice. More disruptive works, such as major partition changes, are easier with the room temporarily vacant.
What's the minimum bedroom size for an HMO in London?
Under the national mandatory conditions, a room used as a bedroom by one person aged 10 or over needs at least 6.51 sqm, two adults sharing a room need 10.22 sqm, and a room for a single child under 10 needs at least 4.64 sqm. These are the baseline figures set out in the mandatory licensing conditions, but they're not always the final word. A number of boroughs running additional or selective licensing schemes apply their own room size standards on top of the national minimums, occasionally higher, and some also set rules around ceiling height reducing the usable floor area if a room has sloped ceilings in a loft conversion. We always check the specific scheme covering the property's borough before treating any figure as fixed, then measure the existing rooms against it and flag any that fall short before pricing partition or reconfiguration work.
Do we need building regulations approval as well as an HMO licence?
Often yes, and it's worth understanding these are two separate processes that need to line up. Fire doors, partition changes, new bathrooms or kitchens, and any alterations affecting escape routes typically fall under Building Regulations, particularly Part B for fire safety, which is separate from the HMO licensing process run by the council's housing team. Licensing conditions set out what the council wants to see in the finished property; Building Regulations govern how the work itself has to be done, inspected and signed off, sometimes by building control and sometimes under a competent person scheme depending on the trade. We build both requirements into the same specification from the outset so the finished work satisfies the licence conditions an inspecting officer will check and has the correct building control sign-off or completion certificate, rather than treating them as two separate jobs that risk ending up in conflict with each other.
Do you handle the HMO licence application itself?
No, the licence application itself goes to the council and is normally handled directly by the landlord or their letting agent, since it involves personal declarations, fit and proper person checks, and financial details we're not party to. What we do is carry out the building work the licence conditions require, whether that's fire doors and alarms or a full reconfiguration, and we can provide photos, product certificates for fire doors and alarm systems, and a written specification of the completed works, which landlords typically need to submit alongside the application form or show an inspecting officer at the first licence visit. If a council asks a specific technical question about how a fire door or partition was constructed, we're happy to put that in writing directly.
Does converting a house into an HMO need planning permission?
It depends on the borough and the size of the HMO you're creating. Many parts of London sit within an Article 4 direction that removes permitted development rights for small HMOs housing up to six unrelated occupants, which means full planning permission is needed even for a fairly modest conversion that wouldn't otherwise need it. Larger HMOs housing seven or more occupants need planning permission everywhere in London regardless of Article 4 status, since that size falls outside permitted development entirely. Article 4 coverage varies block by block in some boroughs rather than applying borough-wide, so we can't confirm the position for a specific address without checking the local planning register. We'd recommend checking this before committing to a conversion, and we can flag anything relevant as part of our initial survey before any building work is priced.
What if the property only has one staircase, how do you deal with fire safety?
A single staircase serving all floors is common in converted Victorian and Edwardian terraces, and it effectively becomes the whole fire strategy for the property since it's the only way out from the upper floors. That usually means every door opening onto the stair, bedroom doors included, needs to be an FD30s fire door with intumescent strips and cold smoke seals, the stair enclosure itself needs to be built from fire-resisting construction from ground floor to top floor, and any cupboards, meter boxes or service risers opening onto it need to be fire-stopped and fitted with fire-rated doors of their own. On larger three-storey conversions, some fire strategies also call for a heat or smoke detector positioned directly on the stair and tied into the interlinked mains alarm system, which we'd identify and position correctly during the initial survey rather than as an afterthought.
Talk to Lian Construction about your project
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