If your landlord let an unlicensed home, you may be able to claim your rent back
Hundreds of areas in England and Wales require a landlord licence, and plenty of landlords do not hold one. Letting without a licence is a criminal offence, and a tenant can apply for a Rent Repayment Order of up to 24 months' rent. The first question is whether your address was inside a designated area.
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24 months
Maximum rent an order can repay, for offences from 1 May 2026
2 years
Deadline to apply from the date of the offence
No conviction
Needed first. The tribunal decides for itself
How this actually works
Councils in England and Wales can designate areas where every private rented home needs a licence, called selective licensing, and areas where smaller shared houses need one, called additional licensing. On top of that, any property in England let to five or more people forming two or more households needs a mandatory HMO licence wherever it is. 90 English councils currently run at least one live scheme.
If your landlord let a property that needed a licence, without one, they committed an offence under section 72(1) or section 95(1) of the Housing Act 2004. You do not need them prosecuted. You apply to the First-tier Tribunal yourself, and the tribunal decides.
Be clear about the odds, though. The tribunal has to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offence happened, which is the criminal standard applied in a civil tribunal. And it awards a percentage of the rent, not the whole of it. A calculator that tells you the maximum is telling you the ceiling, not the answer.
Three things that stop a claim before it starts
- Your landlord had already applied for a licence, or held a temporary exemption notice, for the whole period. Then no offence was committed at all.
- The property was outside the designated area. Selective and additional schemes are often drawn street by street, and the street next door may not be covered.
- More than two years have passed since the offence. That is a hard deadline under section 41 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016.
All three are worth checking before you pay a tribunal fee. The first and third you can settle yourself; the second is what our postcode check is for.
Start here
Rent Repayment Orders explained
What they are, which offences qualify, how much tribunals actually award, and the step-by-step route to applying with Form RRO1.
Rent Repayment Order calculator
Put in your rent and how long the property was unlicensed. See the realistic award range, worked the way the tribunal works it.
Is my landlord licensed?
How to find out, free, in three ways: the council's public register, the postcode designation check, and a written request to the council.
My HMO is unlicensed. What now?
Shared houses are where most licensing breaches sit. What counts as an HMO, what your landlord should hold, and what you can do about it.
Licensing is not the only route to a Rent Repayment Order
Section 40(3) of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 lists every offence that can support an order. PRSCheck can evidence the two licensing ones. The rest are listed here because you may have a claim we cannot help with, and you should know that.
- Control or management of an unlicensed HMOPRSCheck covers thisHousing Act 2004 s.72(1)
- Control or management of an unlicensed house (selective licensing)PRSCheck covers thisHousing Act 2004 s.95(1)
- Eviction or harassment of an occupierProtection from Eviction Act 1977 s.1
- Using or threatening violence to secure entryCriminal Law Act 1977 s.6
- Failure to comply with an improvement noticeHousing Act 2004 s.30
- Failure to comply with a prohibition orderHousing Act 2004 s.32
- Breach of a banning orderHousing and Planning Act 2016 s.21
- Knowingly or recklessly misusing a ground for possessionHousing Act 1988 s.16J(1)
- Breach of the re-letting and re-marketing restrictionsHousing Act 1988 s.16J(2)
- Continuing breach of the tenancy reform provisionsHousing Act 1988 s.16J(3)
For illegal eviction, harassment or a misused possession ground, speak to Shelter, Citizens Advice or your council's private-sector housing team. Those claims turn on what happened to you rather than on where the property is, so a postcode check cannot evidence them.
Landlord, not a tenant?
The same check tells you whether your property needs a licence, before a tenant asks the question for you.
Go to the landlord side