HMO Management Regulations: The Duty That Applies With or Without a Licence

Landlords often treat "getting the licence" as the finish line. It isn't. The Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006 impose a separate, ongoing set of legal duties on anyone managing an HMO, and critically, these apply whether or not the property currently holds, needs, or has ever needed a licence.

Why this catches landlords out

Because the Management Regulations attach to the fact of managing an HMO rather than to the licence itself, a landlord can be in breach of them even on a property that is fully and correctly licensed, or even one that falls outside the licensing thresholds entirely and has never required a licence at all. Licensing and management duties are enforced separately, and a licence being in good standing does not mean the management duties underneath it are automatically satisfied — the two are checked against different legal tests by council officers, sometimes on different visits.

What the Regulations actually require

The manager must keep the property in good structural repair, ensure water and drainage systems serving the building are in good working order and properly maintained, and keep common parts, fixtures and fittings in good decorative repair. They must provide adequate means of escape from fire and maintain that escape route clear of obstruction, maintain fire detection and alarm equipment appropriate to the property, and ensure gas and electrical installations serving the property are kept in a safe condition throughout the tenancy, not just at the point of application. They must also provide adequate facilities for the storage and disposal of household waste, and ensure every occupier is given the manager's name and a working contact address or number, so tenants always know who to report a defect to.

How this differs from the mandatory licence conditions

The mandatory licence conditions under the Licensing of HMOs (Mandatory Conditions of Licences) (England) Regulations 2018 — the annual gas safety certificate, electrical inspections at intervals not exceeding five years, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, minimum room sizes, and compliant furniture — overlap with several of the Management Regulations' duties but are not identical to them, and they are set out in different legislation. A property can satisfy every mandatory licence condition checked at the point of application or renewal and still fall out of compliance with the ongoing Management Regulations duties in between those checkpoints, because the licence conditions are typically verified periodically while the management duties apply continuously, day to day.

Enforcement is separate from licensing enforcement

A council can take action for a Management Regulations breach entirely independently of any licensing matter, meaning a property with a perfectly valid HMO licence can still face enforcement action, civil penalties, and potentially prosecution for a management failure alone. This surprises landlords who assume that a valid, current licence is a form of blanket protection — it is not. A council officer inspecting a licensed HMO and finding, for example, a fire door propped open or a communal smoke detector that has been disconnected, can pursue a Management Regulations enforcement action on that finding alone, regardless of the property's licensing status.

Why compliance drifts over time

Because these duties are continuous rather than assessed once at application, they are a common area where landlords who were fully compliant at the point of licensing gradually drift out of compliance as time passes — a broken smoke detector that never gets replaced, a fire door that gets propped open for convenience and stays that way, a repair reported by a tenant that gets deferred and then forgotten. None of these are dramatic failures individually, and that is exactly why they persist: nothing forces a landlord to re-check them unless a tenant complains or a council inspection happens to catch them. Regular self-checks between licence renewals matter as much as getting the initial application right.

The electrical and gas safety element in practice

The gas and electrical safety duties under the Management Regulations sit alongside the mandatory licence conditions requiring an annual gas safety certificate and periodic electrical inspection, and in practice landlords often arrange both sets of checks together rather than separately. Our sister site, electrician247.london, carries out NICEIC-certified EICR and fire alarm testing for London landlords, which covers the electrical safety evidence needed for both the licence conditions and the ongoing management duty, while we handle the licence application and council liaison side.

We can help either way

Whether or not your property currently needs an HMO licence, if you are unsure whether your management practices meet these separate statutory duties, get in touch. We can point you toward the right specialist support for structural, fire safety, or electrical work, or advise on how the licensing and management regimes interact for your specific property, so nothing falls through the gap between the two.