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Council licensing in East of England

Licensing in Brentwood

Brentwood has no selective or additional licensing scheme in force.

Checked 14 Oct 2026

Check an address in Brentwood

We'll match the postcode to its ward and the schemes below.

Licensing, ward by ward

Select a ward to see its name and licensing.

  • National rules only13

Current ward boundaries from ONS. Some homes are exempt, so check your postcode and the scheme details below.

Selective licensing
None
Additional HMO licensing
No
Article 4 on house shares
None found
Consultation
None open

Licensing schemes

  • Mandatory HMO licence

    In force

    Mandatory HMO licensing (national scheme, Brentwood fees)

    Area

    The whole of Brentwood borough (national scheme).

    Fee

    £890 for 5 years

    From the council's HMO page: New Licence £890; Renewal of Licence £603. The page does not say which year the fees apply to, and no per-room charge, staged payment or discount is described.

    Who needs one
    'Large HMOs': properties occupied by five or more persons living in more than one household, with at least one tenant paying rent. The council notes that a group of friends sharing a house is not a single household for licensing purposes.
    Apply on the council's website
    How we checked this

    This is the national scheme. Brentwood publishes its own page and fees. Apply or renew online (renewals: my.brentwood.gov.uk). 'A licence is issued for a period of five years, and the property will be subject to inspection during this period.' The HMO licence public register is published among the council's transparency documents. The page links the Essex Approved Code of Practice on amenity standards and fire precautions for HMOs. The page still says landlords who fail to apply 'may face fines of up to £20,000, a criminal record and potentially rent repayment orders', and does not mention civil penalties.

    Sources

Article 4 for house shares

We found no Article 4 direction on house shares in Brentwood.

Civil penalty policy

The council's policy sets how it decides the size of a fine. The version we found has been updated for the Renters' Rights Act.

Full Council approved a Housing Enforcement Policy and Civil Penalties Policy on 23 March 2026 (minute 484, 'Renter's Rights Act 2025'), drafted to cover the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and based on the Association of Chief Environmental Health Officers (ACEHO) model. The policy is in the supplementary agenda pack for that meeting. Failure to obtain an HMO licence (s.72(1)) starts at £17,000 against a £40,000 maximum, adjusted by 20% for landlord type (£13,600 down, £20,400 up), then for aggravating and mitigating factors. Council delegated the setting of an 'interim set of Fees and Charges for the Civil Penalties Policy' to officers and asked for a review after six months of operation. The policy was not found on brentwood.gov.uk itself; the council's Renters' Rights Act page mentions higher fines but links no policy.

Brentwood's civil penalty policy

Consultations

We found no consultations when we researched Brentwood.

Not yet confirmed

We could not settle these points when we researched Brentwood on 14 October 2026. Check them with the council before you rely on them.

  • Not yet confirmed

    No selective or additional licensing scheme, proposal or consultation was found on the council website (HMO and private housing pages, sitemap, consultations page updated 16 September 2026, which lists none current) or in a web search. Brentwood's moderngov site blocks automated browsing of agendas (Cloudflare), although individual documents could be fetched, so committee papers were not searched item by item.

  • Not yet confirmed

    The HMO page does not state the year its fees apply to. Confirm they are the 2026/27 fees.

  • Not yet confirmed

    The adopted civil penalty policy was read from the Council agenda pack; confirm whether a final version is published on the council website and whether the interim 'fees and charges' for civil penalties differ from the ACEHO starting points.

Landlord register

The national landlord register is separate from licensing. Brentwood is in East of England, where registration is planned from 15 January 2027 to 14 April 2027. The regulations are still in draft. Read about the register