HMOs, the start of term, and the penalty that rose in May

The last week of August is when shared housing turns over. Tenancies end, deposits get argued about, a contractor spends a fortnight in an empty house, and in the first fortnight of September a new set of people move in who have never been in the building before. It is the busiest fortnight of the year for anyone managing an HMO, and it is also the point at which the paper record is most likely to slip, because everyone is dealing with the physical handover instead.

The duties do not turn over with the tenants. They sit with the building and with whoever manages it, and they run straight through the void.

Licensable, and the far larger category of not licensable

A house in multiple occupation needs a mandatory licence in England if it is occupied by five or more people forming two or more households. The storey threshold went in October 2018, so a two storey terrace with five sharers is caught in exactly the same way a three storey one is. Operating a licensable HMO without a licence is a criminal offence under section 72 of the Housing Act 2004.

Councils can also run additional licensing, which extends the requirement to smaller HMOs in a designated area, and selective licensing, which catches privately rented homes generally. Those designations are local, they are time limited, and they change. A property that did not need a licence when you took it on may need one now, and the obligation to know that sits with the landlord rather than with the council.

The more useful point for most managers is what applies regardless. The Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006 apply to every HMO, licensed or not. Under regulation 4 the manager has to keep all means of escape from fire free from obstruction and maintained in good order and repair, keep firefighting equipment and fire alarms in good working order, display notices showing the means of escape where the HMO has more than four occupiers, and take the measures reasonably required to protect the occupiers from injury given the design and condition of the building and the number of people in it.

Read that list against a house on handover weekend. Mattresses on a landing. A fire door wedged for the removals. Old furniture stacked in the hall until somebody books a collection. The obstruction offence does not require anyone to be hurt, and none of it is a licensing question.

The common parts are also covered by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which means there is a responsible person and there should be a current fire risk assessment for the shared hallway, stairs and kitchen, in every shared house, whether or not a licence is in force.

What changed on 1 May 2026

The financial exposure moved this year. The statutory instrument raising the maximum financial penalty for offences under section 249A of the Housing Act 2004 and section 23 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 from £30,000 to £40,000 came into force on 1 May 2026, alongside the tenancy provisions of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Civil penalties under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and other housing legislation, 2026).

The same guidance sets a two tier structure. Breaches attract a civil penalty of up to £7,000. Offences attract up to £40,000. It also publishes starting points that councils work from, and they are worth knowing because they are higher than most people assume:

• Operating an unlicensed mandatory HMO: £17,000
• Operating an unlicensed HMO under additional licensing: £17,000
• Knowingly permitting an HMO to be over-occupied: £20,000
• Renting a property subject to selective licensing without a licence: £12,000
• Failure to comply with an improvement notice: £25,000

Those are starting points, not ceilings, and they are per offence. A civil penalty is an alternative to prosecution rather than an addition to it, so a council chooses one route or the other. What it does not do is require a court, which is precisely why the numbers matter to a portfolio.

The guidance applies to breaches and offences committed on or after 1 May 2026, so the coming term is the first full academic year under the higher figures.

The turnover checks worth doing before anyone moves in

Most of this is unremarkable, which is the point.

Alarms. Under the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015, as amended from 1 October 2022, there must be a smoke alarm on every storey with a room used as living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any such room containing a fixed combustion appliance other than a gas cooker. Test at the start of the tenancy, and repair or replace once a tenant reports a fault.

Gas. An annual gas safety check by a Gas Safe registered engineer, with the record given to each new occupier. In a house that changed hands in August, check the date on the certificate rather than assuming the cycle is intact.

Electrics. An EICR at least every five years under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, with a copy to new tenants. Voids are when remedial C2 items actually get done, and September is when they stop being possible.

Escape routes. Walk them empty and walk them again once the house is full. The route that was clear on the twenty-eighth of August is not necessarily clear on the fifteenth of September.

Occupancy. Count who is actually living there against what the licence says. Over-occupation carries its own offence and its own £20,000 starting point.

What the record has to show

A council officer arriving at a shared house is not asking whether the building is safe in the abstract. They are asking for dates and names. When was the fire risk assessment reviewed and by whom. When was the alarm system last tested. Who is the manager for the purposes of the 2006 Regulations. What did you do when a tenant reported that the alarm in the hall was chirping.

Those questions are answerable in about a minute or not at all, and the difference is whether the answers live in one place.

Where SAMRISK fits

An HMO is a small building with a large amount of recurring paperwork and a high rate of occupier turnover, which is the worst possible combination for a filing system built out of email.

The fire risk assessment for the common parts is a dated risk assessment with a named owner and a review date, not a PDF from a previous managing agent. The alarm tests, the escape route walks and the annual gas check sit on the compliance calendar so the next date is set the moment the last one is signed off. The certificates themselves, the licence, the EICR and the gas safety record live with the building's other documents and can be produced together. A reported fault becomes a task with a clock on it rather than a message somebody meant to forward. A blocked escape route found on a walk round is an incident with a photograph, a time and a resolution. And the turnover check itself is an audit you run every August, the same way each year, so the evidence of having done it exists before anyone asks.

The building work of a handover takes a fortnight. The record of it takes an afternoon, and it is the only part anybody will ask you for.