Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 16 October 2017 to Question 105736, how many additional houses of multiple occupation have been registered under the scope of mandatory licensing.

We estimate from local authority data returns for the period 2016-2017, that there was a stock of 495,208 Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) in England at that time. This included all HMOs with 3 or more people from 2 or more households.

The 2016-2017 returns give the actual number of mandatory licensed HMOs, with 5 or more people, at 1 April 2017 as 43,392. Since these figures were published the Government has extended mandatory licensing of HMOs to properties of any size, given 5 or more people from more than 1 household.

Data on properties licensed at 13 December 2018 will not be available until local authority data returns for 2018-2019 are published in 2020. However, we now estimate that the extension will bring an additional 170,000 properties within the scope of mandatory licensing.