HMO fire alarms in London

Broadly, a house in multiple occupation is a property occupied by three or more people forming more than one household who share a kitchen, bathroom or toilet. Mandatory licensing in England is narrower and bites where five or more people from two or more households occupy the property, regardless of how many storeys it has. The complication is that many London boroughs also run additional or selective licensing schemes of their own, which can catch much smaller properties, so the national rule is the floor rather than the whole answer. Check your specific borough before assuming you are outside it.

It depends on the size of the property, the number of storeys and how the escape route works, and it is the fire risk assessment that decides rather than a rule of thumb. Smaller shared houses are frequently served adequately by interlinked mains-powered alarms. Larger properties, and particularly those over several storeys where people sleep behind more doors than one escape route comfortably serves, commonly end up at Grade A with a panel. The vocabulary is explained in our guide to grades and categories, and the practical answer for your property comes out of the survey.

Yes, and this is the most common way landlords come to us. Send the schedule with the fire risk assessment if you have one. We price the fire detection items line by line against what the schedule actually asks for, so you can see which items are genuinely required, which are already satisfied by what is installed, and which need clarification with the officer before anyone spends money. Schedules are sometimes written from a template and occasionally ask for something the property already has.

LACORS housing fire safety guidance, published in 2008, is the document local authority housing teams in England and Wales generally work from when judging whether fire precautions in shared and rented housing are reasonable. It is guidance rather than law, so nobody is prosecuted under LACORS. What happens instead is that an officer forms a view using it, and then acts through the Housing Act or through licence conditions. That is why it is worth knowing by name: it tells you what the person inspecting your property is most likely comparing it against.

Yes. Licensing and fire risk assessment are separate duties that happen to overlap. The Fire Safety Order 2005 applies to the common parts of an HMO and requires a suitable and sufficient assessment regardless of whether the property is licensed, while licence conditions are imposed by the council under housing legislation. Satisfying one does not discharge the other, and an assessment that has never been reviewed since the property was let is a common finding at inspection.

Tell us the deadline when you enquire and we will tell you honestly whether we can meet it. We reply to every enquiry within 24 to 48 hours and the survey is free. Where a deadline is genuinely tight, the useful thing is usually to get the survey done first so you have a written position and a programme to show the officer, because a demonstrable plan is worth considerably more than an unanswered letter.