Length of HMO license - any shorter than 5 years

[midlandslandlord]

A question for reasons of curiosity and too much time on my hands today.

Looking at the Nottingham HMO regs here:

http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=8157

it says:


What is the fee?

£640. The licence can be issued for any amount of time, up to five years. Please note that the City Council does not accept cash.

That sounds as if they could choose to issue e.g., annual licenses in these times of budget cuts.

On the other side, there's the overall "charges must roughly equal implementation costs" criteria, but that didn't stop Newcastle charging £1100.

Is anyone aware of cases where Council's routinely make HMO licenses shorter than 5 years as policy, rather than for other reasons?

(Hmmm. Just spotted Oxford. Any more?)

Rgds

ML

[developer215]

I believe that if a rogue landlord hadn't licensed his property at the start of year 1 with everyone else, then when they catch him (for example in year 3) he can be granted a licence for the balance of the original 5 year period.

It's a deterrent to stop the bad guys thinking they can wait until they are caught and then get 5 years to the next one.

There's a lot of licencing parameters that are at the discretion of the local council, i.e, not statutory from CG, so some area are different to others. The setting of the fee is a good example.