If you own a rental property in Nottingham, there is a good chance it falls under a licensing scheme, and the rules are stricter, and the penalties steeper, than many landlords realise. With Nottingham City Council actively enforcing compliance and licence fees having risen again this year, understanding exactly where your property stands is essential.


A Second Scheme, Not An Extension Of The First

Nottingham City Council’s first Selective Licensing scheme ran from 2018 until it expired in July 2023. A second scheme then began on 1 December 2023, covering a different designated area of the city to the one used previously.

This distinction matters more than it might seem. If your property was licensed under the first scheme but sits outside the boundary of the second, you may no longer need a licence at all. Conversely, if your property was never previously licensed but now falls within the new designated area, you are required to apply, even if nothing else about your circumstances has changed. The scheme is estimated to cover more than 30,000 privately rented homes, but coverage is not universal across the city, so checking your specific address against the current designation is the only reliable way to know where you stand.

Landlords who assume that prior compliance carries over automatically are taking an unnecessary risk. The safest approach is to check your property against Nottingham City Council’s current designated area map rather than relying on your licensing history. This is particularly important for anyone who has bought or sold property within the city since 2023, since a licence does not automatically transfer with a change of ownership, and a new owner inheriting a previously licensed property still needs to confirm their own position under the current scheme.

It’s also worth noting that a licence, once granted, does not adjust itself if circumstances change. If a property that was let as a single dwelling is later converted, or begins to be occupied differently, that can shift which licensing scheme applies. Reviewing your licensing position isn’t a one-off task at the point of letting a property, it’s something that benefits from a periodic check as your portfolio or your properties’ use evolves.

The Cost Of Getting It Wrong

Renting out a licensable property without the correct licence is not simply an administrative oversight in the eyes of the council. It is a criminal offence, and Nottingham has shown a clear willingness to enforce it. Penalties for renting an unlicensed property can reach £30,000 per breach, and in more serious cases, landlords face prosecution through the courts, which carries an unlimited fine on conviction.

On top of that, tenants living in an unlicensed property during the period it should have been licensed can apply for a Rent Repayment Order, requiring the landlord to repay up to twelve months’ rent. For a landlord with several properties in a designated area, the cumulative exposure from non-compliance can quickly outweigh any savings made by avoiding licensing fees.

What Licensing Now Costs

Licence fees increased again from 1 April 2026, and the amount you pay depends on your compliance history and accreditation status rather than being a flat rate. Landlords accredited through recognised bodies such as DASH, Unipol or ANUK now pay £759 per property. Non-accredited landlords pay £950, while those assessed by the council as less compliant face a fee of £1,318 per property.

This tiered structure is a deliberate incentive. Accreditation involves meeting recognised standards for property condition and management practice, and the fee difference reflects the reduced oversight burden that comes with a demonstrated track record. For landlords managing several properties, the gap between the accredited and non-accredited rates can add up to a meaningful sum across a portfolio, making accreditation worth investigating even where it was previously overlooked.

When One Licence Isn’t Enough

Selective Licensing Scheme does not exist in isolation. Nottingham also operates separate Additional and Mandatory Licensing schemes covering Houses in Multiple Occupation, and these run under different rules, different fee structures and different designated boundaries. A landlord with a mixed portfolio, some single lets and some HMOs, may find that different properties fall under entirely different licensing regimes, each with its own conditions to meet and its own renewal timeline to track.

This is where licensing complexity tends to catch landlords out. It is entirely possible to be fully compliant on one property while being unknowingly in breach on another, simply because the two fall under different schemes with different requirements. Keeping track of which licence applies to which property, and when each one is due for renewal, becomes a genuine administrative undertaking once a portfolio grows beyond a handful of properties.

The overlap between schemes also creates confusion at the point of purchase. A landlord buying an additional property in Nottingham needs to establish, before completion ideally, whether the property already holds a licence, whether that licence is still valid, and whether it covers the correct scheme for how the property is currently occupied. Relying on a seller’s assurance that “it’s all sorted” is not a substitute for checking the position independently, since the legal responsibility for an unlicensed property sits with whoever is renting it out at the time, not with the previous owner.

Getting It Right From The Start

Licensing in Nottingham is not going away, and the council’s enforcement record suggests it is only becoming more rigorous. For landlords, the practical priority is straightforward: confirm which scheme, if any, applies to each property you own, understand which fee tier you fall into, and keep on top of renewal dates before they lapse.

Doing this alongside everything else involved in running a rental property, finding tenants, managing repairs, staying on top of wider legislative change, is where many landlords find their time is better spent elsewhere. A managing agent who already tracks every selective licensing scheme across the city removes that burden entirely, alongside the risk of an easily avoidable penalty.

Slater & Brandley manages the full licensing process on behalf of landlords across Nottingham, from initial applications through to renewals. Contact our team to discuss your licensing requirements.

Image Source: Envato