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HMO compliance audit in progress inside a licensed London house in multiple occupation
£250 Fixed Fee · Pass First Time

HMO Compliance Checks London

£250 fixed fee. We inspect every compliance area before the council does — and tell you exactly what to fix. 90-minute on-site audit, full written report inside 48 hours, every borough covered.

48h report · 90-minute on-site · Pass first time · All 32 London boroughs

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Quick Answer

An HMO Compliance Check in London is a pre-licence audit of all 12 statutory and licensing areas — fire detection, fire doors, escape routes, emergency lighting, electrical, gas, room sizes, amenity ratios, heating, EPC, management arrangements and tenancy compliance. £250 fixed fee, 90 minutes on site, written report within 48 hours, every borough covered. Pre-audited HMOs pass first-time inspection above 95% of the time.

What is an HMO compliance check?

A House in Multiple Occupation under the Housing Act 2004 is any property let to three or more occupants from two or more households who share a kitchen, bathroom or living facility. Once a borough licence is in play — mandatory, additional or selective — the property is held to a 12-area standard that ranges from BS 5839-6 fire detection through to Housing Act room sizes and Right to Rent tenancy compliance. A borough inspector will check every one of those areas at first inspection.

The HMO Compliance Audit is a pre-inspection — the same checklist, the same standards, the same scrutiny, carried out by an experienced compliance auditor 7-14 days before the council inspector is due. Every issue is recorded with photo evidence, scored against the relevant statute or LACORS guidance, and reproduced in a prioritised remedial action list. The landlord sees exactly what to fix, and how long they have to fix it, before the borough sees anything.

The fixed fee is £250 inclusive of VAT across all 32 London boroughs. No surcharges for selective licensing portals, no add-ons for additional bedrooms, no parking premium for the Congestion Charge zone. One price, one visit, one report. See the landlord compliance hub for the wider picture or the HMO fire risk assessment for the standalone PAS 79 document the borough also requires.

What we inspect — the full 12-category checklist

Every audit runs through the same 12 categories in the same order. Nothing is judged by sight alone — door gaps are measured with a feeler gauge, alarm sounders are decibel-tested at the head of every bedroom, room areas are measured corner to corner, EICR codes are cross-referenced against the report on file. The full checklist below is the working tick list the auditor brings to site.

A

Fire detection

BS 5839-6:2019+A1:2020

  • Grade D1 LD2 minimum — mains-powered with battery backup, interlinked across every head
  • Heat detectors in every kitchen (smoke heads are not permitted there)
  • Smoke detectors in escape routes and every high-risk room
  • Annual battery replacement records on file and dated
  • Weekly user-test records signed off in the log book
  • Alarm sound level of 75 dB at every bedroom door — measured, not estimated
B

Fire doors

BS 8214 / FD30 certification

  • FD30 fire doors to every bedroom and every kitchen
  • Intumescent strips and cold smoke seals continuous around the leaf, no gaps or paint-over
  • Self-closers fitted on high-risk rooms — kitchen especially
  • Minimum three hinges per door, CE-marked and certifier-stamped
  • Certification labels visible on the top edge of the leaf (BWF, FIRA or equivalent)
  • Threshold gap 3-4 mm maximum — measured with a feeler gauge
C

Escape routes

LACORS National Guidance

  • 30-minute protected route from every bedroom to a final exit
  • Final exit doors must not open inwards onto the escape path
  • Thumb-turn locks only — no key-operated locks anywhere on the escape route
  • Clearly marked exits with emergency lighting where required
  • Adequate stairway width with no obstruction or storage
D

Emergency lighting

BS 5266-1:2016

  • Required in every 3-storey-plus HMO without exception
  • Required wherever the escape route lacks borrowed light from a window
  • 1-hour minimum duration — a 3-hour duration test annually with records
  • Test labels visible on each fitting with last-tested date
E

Electrical

BS 7671 + Electrical Safety Standards 2020

  • Valid EICR within the last 5 years (Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector Regs 2020)
  • All C1 and C2 codes remediated within 28 days of the report
  • RCD protection on every final circuit
  • Tamper-resistant sockets where appropriate to occupancy
  • PAT testing records on every landlord-supplied appliance
F

Gas safety

Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regs 1998

  • Annual Gas Safe certificate (CP12) for every gas appliance
  • Carbon monoxide alarm in every room with a gas appliance — fitted at the right height
  • Boiler servicing records on file going back at least 12 months
G

Room sizes

Housing Act 2004 + London standards

  • 6.51 m² minimum for single occupancy (most London boroughs impose 7.5 m²)
  • 10.22 m² minimum for two adults (London boroughs commonly impose 11 m²)
  • 4.64 m² for a child under 10 sharing
  • Ceiling height minimum 1.5 m — areas below that are excluded from the calc
H

Amenity ratios

Housing Act 2004 Schedule 3

  • 1 bath/shower plus WC plus wash-hand basin per 5 occupants
  • 6-10 occupants need 2 bathrooms (one with separate WC)
  • Kitchen at least 7 m² for up to 5 sharers
  • 1 cooker plus fridge plus sink per 5 sharers
  • Adequate worktop space and storage proportionate to occupant count
I

Heating

Housing Act 2004 + LACORS

  • Fixed heating in every habitable room — no plug-in heaters as the primary source
  • Capable of 21°C in living areas and 18°C in bedrooms at design outside temperature
  • Compliant in both design and installed capacity
J

Energy performance

MEES Regulations 2018

  • Valid EPC on file, minimum E rating to let lawfully
  • Landlord aware of the proposed C rating uplift currently under consultation
K

Management arrangements

HMO (England) Regulations 2006

  • Manager name, address and contact details posted in the property
  • 24/7 emergency contact details available to every resident
  • Records of inspections, repairs and significant incidents on file
L

Tenancy compliance

Housing Act 1988 + Immigration Act 2014

  • Right to Rent checks documented for every adult occupant
  • Tenancy deposit protected with a government-approved scheme within 30 days
  • Prescribed information served on every tenant
  • How to Rent guide issued at the start of every new tenancy
FD30 fire door with intumescent strip and self-closer in a London HMO

HMO Compliance Audit — £250

Fixed fee · Inc. VAT

One price. One visit. One borough-ready report. The £250 covers everything from booking through to the post-report phone consultation — there is no second visit fee for the report, no premium for additional categories and no upcharge for selective licensing portals.

What is included

  • Full on-site inspection — 90 minutes typical for a 4 to 5 bed HMO
  • Written report delivered within 48 hours of the visit
  • Pass / fail summary scored against each of the 12 compliance areas
  • Photo evidence captured for every issue raised
  • Prioritised remedial action list — Critical, High, Medium, Low
  • Free 30-minute phone consultation on the findings with the auditor

What costs more

Remedial works to fix any Fail or Action Needed finding are priced separately on a fixed-price quote — no obligation to use ERL. 20% off both services for landlords combining the audit with the £400 HMO Licensing Assistance service.

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What the audit report looks like

The PDF lands in the landlord's inbox within 48 hours of the visit. No template padding, no copy-paste paragraphs, no fluff. Five sections, every issue photographed, every finding scored, every remedial action priced. Sized to upload directly to the borough HMO licensing portal.

HMO compliance audit report PDF with prioritised remedial action list

Property summary

Address, number of bedrooms, declared occupant count, licence type (mandatory, additional or selective), borough, date of inspection and assessor name.

Per-category scoring

Each of the 12 compliance areas above scored Pass, Fail or Action Needed with a short narrative — no jargon, no copy-paste paragraphs, no padding.

Photo evidence

Every failure documented with a dated, location-tagged photograph — used by the auditor on site and reproduced in the PDF for landlord, agent and council reference.

Prioritised remedial list

Critical (immediate, 24-72 hours), High (28 days), Medium (90 days), Low (12 months). Mapped directly to the typical borough remedial windows so the action plan is portable across Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Brent, Waltham Forest and every other London licensing team.

Estimated remedial costs

Optional section, included on request. Itemised fixed-price estimate for fire doors, alarm upgrades, EICR remedial works, emergency lighting and any other High or Critical finding. No obligation to use ERL for the works.

DIY checklist vs ERL audit

Plenty of landlords try to self-audit before a licence inspection. It is rational on paper — the council publishes the checklist, the BS standards are publicly available, anyone with a tape measure and an evening can work through them. In practice, the things a self-audit misses are the things the council comes back on.

FactorDIY checklistERL audit
CostFree£250 fixed
Time on site4-6 hours (self)90 minutes
Report turnaroundSelf-written, undated48 hours, PDF
BS-standards judgementReading-level onlyApplied by a compliance auditor
Coverage of all 12 areasItems commonly missedComplete
Photo evidenceNoneEvery issue documented
Remedial worksOut of scopeIn-house fixed-price quote
First-time pass rate~30%95%+

Our 4-step process

1

Book

Phone, WhatsApp or the online booking form. Borough, address, bedroom count and target licence date confirmed on the call.

2

90-min on-site audit

Compliance auditor attends with calibrated equipment, runs the 12-category checklist, photographs every issue. Any London borough.

3

Report in 48h

PDF report delivered by email with category scoring, photo evidence and prioritised remedial action plan.

4

Optional remedial quote

Fixed-price quote for every Fail or Action Needed item. No obligation to use ERL — the report is yours.

Common HMO fail points — real numbers from the field

The list below is drawn from our last 200 pre-audit visits across Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Brent and Waltham Forest. None of these are exotic findings — they are the everyday gaps between "the landlord thought it was fine" and "the borough inspector said it was not". Every one is cheap to fix on remediation, and every one is a hard fail if it is still there on the day of the council inspection.

Issue foundRate
Smoke alarms not interlinked — Grade D LD2 fail60%
FD30 fire doors lacking intumescent strips or cold smoke seals45%
Missing carbon monoxide alarm in a room with a gas appliance50%
Missing or expired EICR on the landlord file35%
Undersized bedroom — under the 6.51 m² statutory floor30%
Bathroom-to-occupant ratio breached for 6+ sharers20%
HMO bedroom measured during a London compliance audit for Housing Act room size compliance

Related compliance services

HMO Licensing Assistance

Pair & save

Full HMO licence application service across all London boroughs — £400. Pair with the audit and get 20% off both.

Learn more →

HMO Fire Risk Assessment

PAS 79-1:2020 fire risk assessment for licensed HMOs, from £169. LACORS-compliant, borough-licensing-ready PDF within 48 hours.

Learn more →

EICR London

NICEIC-registered electrical safety inspection. 5-year certificate, BS 7671 model report, fixed-price remedial works.

Learn more →

Fire Alarm Testing

BS 5839-6 grade testing for HMOs — Grade D LD2 verification, sound-level checks, log book sign-off and annual maintenance.

Learn more →

Also commonly bundled: smoke alarm installation, emergency lighting testing, gas safety certificate, the landlord compliance hub and the for landlords overview.

Areas covered

HMO compliance audits are carried out across all 32 London boroughs. Highest volumes through Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Brent and Waltham Forest — the boroughs with the largest licensed HMO stock.

CamdenHackneyTower HamletsNewhamWaltham ForestBrentSouthwarkLambethLewishamHaringeyIslingtonWestminster

Frequently Asked Questions

What does an HMO compliance check cover?
An HMO compliance check covers all 12 statutory and licensing areas a borough inspector will scrutinise — fire detection to BS 5839-6, FD30 fire doors, escape routes, emergency lighting to BS 5266-1, electrical (a current EICR and remediation of all C1/C2 codes), gas safety (CP12 plus CO alarms), room sizes against both the Housing Act 2004 minimums and the tighter London borough standards, amenity ratios for bath/WC/kitchen, fixed heating, EPC rating, management arrangements under the 2006 Regs and tenancy compliance from Right to Rent through to deposit protection. Every category is scored Pass, Fail or Action Needed with photo evidence in the PDF.
How much does an HMO compliance audit cost?
The ERL HMO Compliance Audit is a fixed £250 inclusive of VAT for any HMO in any of the 32 London boroughs. No hidden parking charges, no premium for selective licensing portals, no add-on for additional bedrooms beyond what the council itself would price. The fixed fee covers the 90-minute on-site inspection, the written report within 48 hours, photo evidence on every issue and a free 30-minute phone consultation on the findings. Remedial works to fix any Fail or Action Needed item are priced separately on a quote.
How long does the audit take?
A typical 4 to 5 bedroom HMO takes 90 minutes on site. A 3-bed small HMO is closer to 60 minutes. A 6 to 7 bedroom multi-storey HMO with a basement runs to two hours. Block-wide HMO common parts are scoped on the call. The written report follows within 48 hours of the visit. Every bedroom needs to be accessible during the audit — access notices are coordinated with the managing agent or landlord at booking, normally 24 hours' notice is enough.
Will you fix anything we find?
Yes — but only if you want us to. Every Critical, High or Medium finding is reproduced as an itemised fixed-price quote that lands with the audit report. Fire doors, alarm upgrades, EICR remedial works, emergency lighting, CO alarms, kitchen extract and bathroom upgrades are all handled in-house. There is no obligation to use ERL for the remedial works — the report is yours, take it to any contractor, the council accepts it either way. Landlords using us for both audit and remediation get a single point of accountability and one consolidated invoice.
Do I need a compliance check before applying for a licence?
Not a statutory must, but a near-universal yes in practice. The application fee for a mandatory HMO licence ranges £900-£1,500 depending on borough, the application is non-refundable, and a failed council inspection means the borough comes back at the landlord with a remedial schedule and a 28-day clock. The £250 pre-audit identifies and fixes every issue before the council inspector arrives. Landlords applying without a pre-audit fail first inspection roughly 70% of the time across the Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham licensing teams.
What's the most common HMO fail point?
Fire detection — by a long way. Around 60% of pre-audit properties have a non-compliant alarm grade. The most common single failure is smoke heads that are not interlinked, so a fire in the kitchen at 3am does not wake the tenants in the loft bedroom. Fire doors lacking intumescent strips or with painted-over smoke seals come in second at around 45%. Missing CO alarms in gas-appliance rooms is third at 50%. All three are inexpensive to fix on remediation, which is why landlords who pre-audit pass first time at a rate above 95%.
What room sizes are required for an HMO in London?
The Housing Act 2004 statutory minimums are 6.51 m² for a single adult, 10.22 m² for two adults sharing and 4.64 m² for a child under 10. London boroughs routinely impose tighter standards on top — Camden, Hackney, Islington, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea commonly require 7.5 m² for a single adult and 11 m² for two adults, written into the HMO licence conditions. Ceilings below 1.5 m are excluded from the room area calculation, which catches a lot of attic conversions. The audit measures every habitable room and flags any room within 1 m² of the borough floor as a borderline risk.
How many fire doors does my HMO need?
Every bedroom door, every kitchen door and every door opening onto a protected escape route must be FD30 (30-minute rated) in a licensed HMO. In larger HMOs (LACORS Type C, three storeys plus or six or more sharers) FD60 doors are required to higher-risk rooms. Each fire door must carry a certifier label, continuous intumescent strips and cold smoke seals, a CE-marked self-closer on kitchens, at least three hinges and a 3-4 mm maximum gap to the frame. A typical 5-bed HMO needs 6-8 FD30 doors. Fire doors are the second most common audit failure after alarms.
Do I need emergency lighting in my HMO?
Required by default in every 3-storey-plus HMO, and required in any HMO where the escape route lacks borrowed light from a window — basements, internal corridors with no glazing, stairwells with shuttered windows. The system is specified to BS 5266-1 with a 1-hour minimum duration on battery and a 3-hour annual duration test. Test labels must be visible on each fitting. Single-storey HMOs and small two-storey conversions with windowed escape routes are typically exempt, but the audit confirms exemption on the day rather than assuming.
What happens if I fail the council inspection?
The borough issues a schedule of works with statutory deadlines — usually 24-72 hours for Critical safety items, 28 days for High, 90 days for Medium. The HMO licence is not granted (or is granted with conditions) until the schedule is closed out and a re-inspection confirms compliance. Re-inspections incur further fees. Repeated failure can result in a refused licence, an Improvement Notice under the Housing Act 2004, a civil penalty up to £30,000 per breach under the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and tenant Rent Repayment Orders recovering up to 12 months of rent at First-tier Tribunal.
Is the audit different to a fire risk assessment?
Yes — different purpose, different output. The HMO Compliance Audit covers all 12 statutory and licensing areas (fire safety is one of those 12) and is designed to pre-empt the borough licensing inspection. The Fire Risk Assessment is a PAS 79-1:2020 document focused exclusively on fire safety, scored against the LACORS National Fire Safety Guidance, and is a separate document the borough requires as a condition of the HMO licence. Most landlords commission both — the audit identifies any gaps, the FRA satisfies the statutory licensing requirement. Combined visits save a second attendance fee.
Can I get a discount if I use you for licensing too?
Yes. The HMO Licensing Assistance service is £400 — full application, borough portal upload, supporting document pack and follow-up correspondence with the licensing team. Landlords who book the £250 Compliance Audit alongside the £400 licensing service get 20% off both — a combined £520 instead of £650. Portfolio landlords with three or more HMOs unlock further scaled discounts on both services. Talk it through on the call and a fixed quote will be confirmed before any work is booked.

Book your £250 HMO Compliance Audit

One fixed fee. One 90-minute visit. One borough-ready PDF in 48 hours. Speak to the HMO compliance team direct — we will confirm the slot on the call and have the auditor on site within the week.

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