Southwark Selective Licensing: What Landlords Need to Know
Southwark selective licensing covers nineteen of the borough's twenty-three wards across four separate designations, each with its own licence conditions. A licence costs £945 per property, usually lasts five years, and letting without one risks a civil penalty of up to £40,000.
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If you are an overseas landlord
Southwark will not consider your application at all without a UK-based managing agent who signs a declaration accepting the licence conditions, and if the property is held through a company, that company needs a UK registered office. Every designation also requires a named local contact who can attend the property within 24 hours. The guide sets out exactly what that arrangement needs to look like.
What Southwark selective licensing requires
Southwark runs four separate selective licensing designations, covering nineteen of the borough's twenty-three wards, plus a borough-wide Additional HMO Licensing scheme. If you let a property to a single household or to two unrelated sharers anywhere in a designated ward, you need a selective licence, and which of the four sets of conditions applies depends on exactly where the property is.
- Designation 1
- Champion Hill, Newington. In force 1 March 2022, ceases 1 March 2027.
- Designation 2
- Faraday, Goose Green, St Giles. In force 1 March 2022, ceases 1 March 2027.
- Designation 3
- North Walworth, Nunhead and Queen's Road, Old Kent Road, Peckham. In force 1 November 2023, runs to 31 October 2028.
- Designation 4
- Camberwell Green, Chaucer, Dulwich Hill, Dulwich Wood, London Bridge and West Bermondsey, Peckham Rye, Rotherhithe, Rye Lane, South Bermondsey, Surrey Docks. In force 1 November 2023, runs to 31 October 2028.
- Fee
- £945 per property, unchanged on 1 April 2026. £803.25 for landlords with the Gold Standard Charter discount.
- Conditions
- Southwark publishes a separate set of licence conditions for each of the four designations. They are not interchangeable, a landlord in Champion Hill and a landlord in Peckham can hold the same type of licence and owe almost none of the same obligations.
A borough-wide Additional HMO Licensing scheme has applied since 1 March 2022, for properties let to 3 or 4 people from 2 or more households sharing a kitchen or bathroom. It ceases on 1 March 2027, alongside Designations 1 and 2, with no replacement yet published. Holding the wrong licence type is treated as a separate offence.
Sources: London Borough of Southwark, Property licensing, Additional licensing and Selective licensing pages; Southwark's four published selective licence conditions documents; Selective Licensing Designations 2022 and Designations 3 and 4 2022; Additional Licensing Designation 2022. Verify scheme facts against Southwark Council on the go-live date.
A licence and a compliance record are not the same thing.
Southwark selective licensing covers nineteen of the borough's twenty-three wards, split across four designations with four different sets of conditions. Same licence type, same fee, materially different obligations depending on exactly where your property sits.
Southwark does not run one selective licensing scheme. It runs four, and each of the four designations carries its own set of licence conditions. A landlord in Champion Hill owes security fittings and anti-social behaviour duties that a landlord in Peckham does not carry at all. A landlord in Peckham owes a written inspection record and rent receipt duties that Champion Hill does not.
The council also publishes conditions that do not always match what is attached to a live licence. On one licence issued in November 2025, we found five material differences from the published set for its designation, including a condition that does not appear on the council's website at all. The document that binds you is the schedule that arrived with your licence, not the PDF published online.
Compliance is not what you do. It is what you can prove you did, against the conditions your own licence actually carries.
Most landlords are not failing to do the right things. They are failing to record them against the right condition set. And the cost of getting it wrong has gone up: the maximum civil penalty for a licensing offence is now £40,000, and a rent repayment order can now force you to hand back up to 24 months' rent. Our free guide identifies your designation, sets out the exact conditions attached to it, and shows what evidence Southwark expects to see.
Southwark Landlord Licence Compliance Guide 2026
Selective licensing covers nineteen of Southwark's twenty-three wards, across four designations with four different sets of conditions.
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- Which of Southwark's four designations your property falls into, and why it matters
- The condition-by-condition comparison across all four designations
- Where the council's published conditions differ from what's on a live licence
- A ten-question stress test to see where you're 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 London Borough of Southwark asks
A timestamped record for every obligation on every property. Software can store documents. It cannot tell you what is missing, or what London Borough of Southwark 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 London Borough of Southwark 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.”
Find out which of the four designations applies to you, before Southwark does.
Start with the free guide. It takes ten minutes and shows you exactly which conditions bind your property.
Prefer to talk it through? Speak to our team about managing your compliance from £80 per month per property.