
Medway Council has announced plans to introduce both selective and additional licensing schemes next summer.
The unitary authority, which covers a large swathe of Kent including Rochester and Gillingham, hopes to bring in an additional scheme in Chatham Central & Brompton, Fort Pitt, Gillingham North, Gillingham South, Luton and Watling - the six wards with the highest number of known and predicted HMOs.
Meanwhile, a new selective scheme would cover Chatham Central & Brompton, Fort Pitt, Gillingham North, Gillingham South, Luton, Strood North & Frindsbury and Watling). These seven wards are estimated to cover 52% of the PRS in Medway, about 14,809 properties.
It plans to review the findings of an upcoming consultation next April with a view to launching the schemes by summer 2026.
A council report found that its private sector housing team received 2,445 complaints between April 2020 and March 2025 relating to poor property conditions and inadequate property management. A previous study revealed that 232 of 1,018 HMOs in Medway are predicted to have at least one serious hazard after the authority recorded 339 complaints from tenants and others linked to HMOs over a five-year period.

At a council meeting, councillor Louwella Prenter (pictured) told colleagues: “We’re not anti-HMO or anti-landlord. We want to work with good landlords…the idea is to improve the standard of accommodation. Property licensing is a way to support vulnerable residents.”
Deputy council leader Teresa Murray added that it wanted to ensure those landlords who received housing benefit made best use of it. “It has been the case in the past...there’s been complacency by landlords who’ve got housing benefit tenants…an attitude of 'what does it matter about the standard of the property?'” she said. “Those landlords are in a minority, but they make a significant impact in the way public money is used. This is our way of making sure we level up standards.”
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