Lambeth Selective Licensing: What Landlords Need to Know
Lambeth selective licensing is live in every ward except Vauxhall and Waterloo & South Bank, with Phase 1 running from September 2024 and Phase 2 from September 2025. A licence costs £1,025 per property (£717.50 on application, £307.50 before issue), Lambeth does not publish a standing set of licence conditions so only the schedule attached to your own licence binds you, and letting without a licence risks a civil penalty of up to £40,000.
Scheme facts last reviewed
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If you are an overseas landlord
Lambeth is the hardest borough in London to hold a licence from abroad. The address on your application is the address the council writes to, and a notice sent there is validly served whether or not you read it. Only you or the agent you have formally notified may lawfully collect the rent, which catches out anyone whose rent goes to a relative, a company account or an unnotified intermediary. And whatever your agent signs up to, the liability stays with you. In our own casework we have seen Lambeth ask an overseas applicant to nominate a local managing agent as a condition of granting the licence. That is not a published rule, so treat it as what to expect rather than as something you can cite. The guide sets out what to have in place before the council asks.
What Lambeth selective licensing requires
Lambeth designated its scheme in two phases that together cover 23 of the borough's 25 wards. If you let a property to a single family household, or to no more than two unrelated sharers, and it is not in Vauxhall or Waterloo and South Bank, you need a selective licence.
- Phase 1
- Knights Hill, Streatham Common and Vale, Streatham Hill East, Streatham St Leonards. Live from 2 September 2024, running to 1 September 2029.
- Phase 2
- The remaining nineteen designated wards, from Brixton and Clapham through Kennington, Oval and Stockwell to Gipsy Hill and West Dulwich. Live from 1 September 2025, running to 31 August 2030.
- Not designated
- Vauxhall, and Waterloo and South Bank. Selective licensing does not apply in these two wards. HMO licensing still does.
- Fee
- £1,025 per property, split into Part A of £717.50 on application and Part B of £307.50 before the licence is issued. Discounts are published for an EPC rated C or above, for accredited landlords, and for additional flats in the same block.
- Term
- Up to 5 years, and your evidence must cover the whole of it.
Lambeth has run an additional HMO licensing scheme since 9 December 2021, covering properties let to three or more people that mandatory licensing does not catch, plus qualifying section 257 converted blocks. A property needs one licence, but it must be the right one. If a single let becomes a three-person share, your selective licence is no longer the correct licence. The additional licensing designation ceases to have effect on 8 December 2026 unless the council renews it, so anyone holding one, or whose property could become a small HMO, should watch that date.
Sources: Lambeth Council selective licensing scheme page; Lambeth Phase 1 and Phase 2 designation notices; Lambeth additional HMO licensing page. Verify scheme facts against Lambeth Council before you act on them.
A licence and a compliance record are not the same thing.
Lambeth's scheme is no longer being introduced. It is being enforced. The council is processing applications and checking compliance at the same time, and for a licence granted in 2024 or 2025 the council's attention has already moved from whether you hold a licence to whether you are keeping to it.
That is harder in Lambeth than in neighbouring boroughs, for one reason. Most councils publish a conditions document you can download and work from. Lambeth's licensing pages do not. The conditions that bind you are the ones issued on paper with your licence, they are specific to that property, and they are not transferable to another one. Two flats on the same street, held by the same landlord, can carry different obligations. A landlord working from a general London licensing article is working from the wrong document.
Then there are the deadlines. Croydon uses 14 days for almost everything. Lambeth uses at least four different periods depending on what the council has asked for: 7 days for a tenancy agreement, 14 days for a gas certificate, 21 days for repair receipts, 28 days for your six-monthly inspection records. Every one of those clocks starts on the date of the request, not the date you read it.
Compliance is not what you do. It is what you can prove you did.
Most landlords are not failing to do the right things. They are failing to record that they did. And the cost of that gap has gone up: the maximum civil penalty for a licensing offence is now £40,000, a rent repayment order can force you to hand back up to two years' rent, and Lambeth's own licensing page warns that an unlicensed property may leave you unable to succeed with a section 8 possession notice. Our free guide covers the conditions Lambeth enforces, the ones landlords most often miss, and exactly what evidence the council asks to see.
Lambeth Landlord Licence Compliance Guide 2026
The scheme is live. The question is no longer whether you hold a licence. It is whether you can prove you are complying with it.
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- Why Lambeth publishes no conditions document, and how to get hold of yours
- The four production clocks, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days, and what falls under each
- The conditions Lambeth landlords most often miss, including who may lawfully collect the rent
- What overseas landlords are being asked for at application stage
- A ten-question stress test, with scoring, to show where you are exposed
The expertise behind the evidence, not just a place to store it.
We chase the renewal before it lapses
Certificates, inspections and reference checks tracked and actioned ahead of time, so a deadline never slips past you. Not a reminder you have to act on yourself.
A complete file, ready when Lambeth Council asks
A timestamped record for every obligation on every property. Software can store documents. It cannot tell you what is missing, or what Lambeth Council will actually want to see. We do that.
A named expert who answers for it
A real compliance function that stands behind your record, registered with a Property Redress Scheme and insured. Not a portal, and not a favour from a friend.
When Lambeth Council asks for a property's compliance history, you forward one file and get on with your day.
Why we built Compliance Shield.
“Compliance in a regulated sector is not about good intentions. It is about being able to prove what you did, on the day someone asks. We built Compliance Shield to give landlords that certainty.”
Lambeth selective licensing, answered
Find out where you stand
Start with the free guide. It takes ten minutes and shows you exactly where you may be exposed. If you are not licensed yet, apply now: a valid application stops the rent repayment order clock from the day it is made.
Prefer to talk it through? Speak to our team about managing your compliance from £80 per month per property.