HMO fire risk assessments in Portsmouth
5 out of 5 stars 5.0 on Google · all 13 reviews →If you let an HMO in Portsmouth, you need a current fire risk assessment twice over: the Fire Safety Order requires one for the common parts, and Portsmouth City Council requires one with your licence application. Apply without one and the council issues a one-year licence with a condition to get it — instead of the full five-year term.
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Nearly every shared house in the city now needs a licence
Portsmouth runs two licensing schemes side by side. Mandatory licensing covers HMOs with five or more people from two or more households — that’s national. But since 1 September 2023, Portsmouth has also run city-wide additional licensing: a five-year designation covering HMOs of three or four people from two or more households, converted buildings with a non-self-contained unit, and shared flats of three or more people in purpose-built blocks of three or more flats.
In practice: if you let a shared house or converted flat anywhere in Portsmouth — Southsea, Fratton, North End, Milton, Copnor, Eastney, Portsea, Baffins, Hilsea, Cosham — three tenants is usually enough to need a licence. Applications go through the council’s Metastreet portal.
Operating a licensable HMO without a licence is an offence under s.72 of the Housing Act 2004 — an unlimited fine on conviction, or a civil penalty of up to £30,000, and tenants can pursue rent repayment orders. A renewal submitted after expiry is treated — and charged — as a brand-new application.
Council facts last reviewed: August 2026
Two documents decide how your application goes
Portsmouth’s application checklist is long — gas certificate where relevant, a satisfactory EICR, fire alarm test certificate if you have a system, emergency lighting annual check if it’s installed, PAT records for anything you supply. But two items shape the outcome more than the rest:
One missing document costs you up to four years of licence.
Required with the application. Apply without a current one and the council issues a one-year licence with a condition to obtain it.
To the council’s own spec — metric sizes, every room labelled, detectors marked.
It doesn’t have to be professionally drawn — but it does have to be right.
I produce the assessment to the standard the council expects, and I can produce the floor plan to their spec while I’m on site. One visit covers the two documents that decide your term. Get my price.
Council facts last reviewed: August 2026
Portsmouth decides your licence length on evidence
Unlike most councils, Portsmouth doesn’t hand every compliant landlord the same term. Your evidence decides between one, two-and-a-half, or five years:
- Missing or unsubmitted FRA
- Missing or unsatisfactory certificates
- Late application
- More than one justified complaint
- Previous conditions not met
- Planning not demonstrable
- Uncertified building work
- No fit-and-proper concerns
- Previous conditions complied with
- No more than one justified complaint
- Application in on time
- All safety certificates current
- Planning or lawful/historic HMO use shown
- Stage 2 fee paid
- Zero justified complaints
- Accreditation with a PCC-recognised body
- EPC band E or higher, within ten years
- Renewals in at least 14 days before expiry
The pattern is worth noticing: the one-year triggers are almost all paperwork failures, not building failures. Which matches what I find on site — see below.
Council facts last reviewed: August 2026
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Which licence would Portsmouth give your HMO?
Same street, same council — but the 1-year licence costs £3,179 more than the 5-year over the same five years. Eleven quick questions tell you which one you're heading for, and what's blocking the rest.
★★★★★ 5.0 on Google · “The resulting report was crystal clear, remarkably thorough, and exceptionally professional.” — HMO landlord · Portsmouth
How many rooms do you rent out (or plan to)?
How many storeys, counting a habitable basement or converted attic?
Do those storeys include a habitable basement or a converted attic?
How do your tenants rent?
Do you have a current fire risk assessment for the property?
Which of these are current and satisfactory?
Can you show planning permission, a lawful use certificate, or evidence of historic HMO use?
Do you have an EPC from the last 10 years at band E or better?
Are you (or your agent) accredited with a body Portsmouth recognises?
Justified complaints about the property in the last 12 months?
Is this a first application or a renewal?
Will it be in at least 14 days before your current licence expires?
The council also runs fit-and-proper checks on every applicant. Anything you already know would flag there?
Your likely licence term
A property this size I price personally — request your fixed quote and I come back the same day, usually.
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Based on Portsmouth City Council's published criteria. The licence decision is always the council's.
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Portsmouth publishes its own fire standards — and they’re less scary than landlords expect
Portsmouth’s fire safety expectations come from its own Space and Amenity Standards for HMOs (November 2022), built on the national LACORS guidance. Two things in it surprise almost every landlord I meet:
Lower-risk — up to four people on one joint tenancy
- Sound, well-constructed, close-fitting conventional doors are acceptable
- FD30S fire doors: recommended only
- Emergency lighting: no requirement
- Escape signage: only where the route is long and complex
Higher-risk — all bedsits and most room-contract lets
- FD30S fire doors become a requirement
- Requirements step up with storeys and letting structure
- Grade A alarm with a central panel in a three-to-four-storey higher-risk house
First — how you let the house changes the fire standard. In the council’s own framing, lower-risk means a lower-occupancy HMO (up to four people) rented on a joint tenancy to an identifiable social group — a friend group of students, say. Higher-risk covers all bedsit HMOs and most HMOs let on separate room contracts. Same bricks, different tenancy structure, different fire standard. Landlords change from a joint tenancy to room-by-room lets without realising they’ve changed their fire safety obligations at the same time.
Second — fire doors are not automatically required. For a lower-risk one- or two-storey shared house, Portsmouth’s own table says “sound, well-constructed and close-fitting doors such as solid wood are acceptable” — FD30S fire doors are recommended only. Emergency lighting: no requirement at that risk level. Escape signage: not required unless the route is long and complex. The requirements step up where the risk steps up — separate room contracts, bedsits, three or four storeys — through to a Grade A alarm system with a central panel in a three-to-four-storey higher-risk house.
The standard is proportionate — but only if someone reads your property against it before you spend. That’s the job of the assessment: not to find you the most expensive route to compliance, but the one your building actually needs.
Full framework in the guide: Does an HMO need a fire risk assessment? · and the four assessment types, explained.
Council facts last reviewed: August 2026
The most expensive words in HMO fire safety: “just fit fire doors”
A Portsmouth landlord I assessed had bought a shared house that was later caught by additional licensing. The advice she received was to fit fire doors — so she did it properly: full-spec FD30s with fire-rated hinges, closers, intumescent strips and cold smoke seals, to the bedrooms and the lounge, at £800–£1,000 a door.
A year later, a different officer advised her to strip the cold smoke seals off the bedroom doors — because with no detection inside the bedrooms, a fully sealed sleeping room can hold smoke away from the landing detector. Technically coherent. But she’d now paid to over-provide, then paid again to walk it backwards — when the applicable standard had only ever asked for sound, conventional doors on a house like hers. And the one door that genuinely mattered — the lounge door onto the sole escape route — was never the focus of any of it.
The lesson, plainly: a council inspector checks compliance. They don’t — and aren’t there to — design you the cheapest compliant route through your specific building. That’s the assessor’s job. A £249 assessment before the first invoice would have specified one door and a detection tweak, in writing, with reasoning your council could read.
Get the assessment before you spend. It’s the cheapest document in the whole process, and it’s the one that stops the expensive ones.
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The price buys more than a visit
A tenant change, a council query, a contractor quote you want a second look at — call or email and I’ll advise.
It’s how I’ve always worked; now it’s in writing as part of what the price buys.
Council asked for expensive work? Send over what they’ve asked for first.
An initial view from what you send, not a formal opinion — that needs the property seen.
Fixed prices, by rented rooms
No VAT, no travel charge, nothing paid until your finalised report is delivered.
Independent HMO assessments across Portsmouth, carried out personally by Matt McAllen — AIFSM independent fire risk assessor and chartered safety professional. Fixed prices from £249 by the number of rented rooms, no upfront payment, and a report ready to submit with your Portsmouth licence application.
| HMO — by rented rooms | Price |
|---|---|
| Up to 4 rented rooms · 2 storeys | £249 |
| 5–7 rented rooms · 2 storeys | £269 |
| Basement or third storey (incl. converted attic) | +£50 |
| 8+ rooms, or basement and attic | Request quote |
The alarms are usually fine. It’s the paperwork that fails.
Across the Portsmouth and Southampton HMOs I’ve assessed, a clear pattern: the hardware is mostly right — often better than required. Detection meeting or beating the benchmark is the norm. What’s missing is almost always the management side: no tenant fire safety information, no testing regime or logbook, no named responsible person, no written evacuation strategy, installation certificates nowhere to be found — and in more than one case, no fire risk assessment at all, despite a licence condition requiring one reviewed annually.
That reframes what the assessment is for. It isn’t an inspection lying in wait to find you a five-figure works bill. For most Portsmouth landlords it’s the document that gets your management side right — the exact area where the council’s one-year triggers live — before the council looks.
Most weeks I’m assessing somewhere in the city — Southsea and Fratton more than anywhere.
Straight answers
Does an HMO mean fire doors everywhere?
No — and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in HMO fire safety. For a lower-risk one- or two-storey shared house on a joint tenancy, Portsmouth’s own standards accept sound, well-constructed, close-fitting conventional doors; FD30S doors are recommended, not required. Fire doors become a requirement as risk rises — separate room contracts, bedsits, three storeys and up. The assessment tells you which side of that line your property sits on, in writing, before you spend.
Is emergency lighting required in my HMO?
Often not. For lower-risk one- and two-storey shared houses, Portsmouth’s standards set no emergency lighting requirement; it’s expected where escape routes are long and complex, and in higher-risk multi-storey properties. It’s one of the most commonly over-anticipated costs I see — landlords brace for a bill the standard never asks for.
I’ve got gas, electrical and alarm certificates — doesn’t that cover it?
No. Those certificates evidence individual systems; none of them is a fire risk assessment, and the council asks for the FRA as well as the certificate stack. One caution from real jobs: an MCS certificate or a Building Regs compliance certificate is not the BS 7671 electrical installation certificate — landlords hand over the wrong document in good faith more often than you’d think.
How often does the assessment need reviewing in Portsmouth?
Portsmouth’s licence conditions require a written fire risk assessment available for inspection and reviewed at least annually — or on a change of tenancy if sooner. You don’t need a full rewrite each year; a dated review note against the existing assessment is acceptable. (Reviewing it is a duty regardless of whether anyone chases you — most lapses I find happened silently.)
My tenants are on separate room agreements — does that change anything?
Yes, materially. Portsmouth’s own standards class most room-contract and all bedsit lets as higher-risk — which brings requirements like FD30S doors to let rooms and, in taller properties, a panel-based Grade A alarm system. If you’re switching a joint tenancy to room-by-room lets, treat it as a fire safety change, not just a tenancy change — ideally reviewed before the new agreements start.
I’m applying without a current FRA — what happens?
Portsmouth will still process you, but you’ll be issued a one-year licence with a condition to obtain the assessment — instead of up to five years. Getting it done before you apply is the difference. I can usually assess within days: get my price.
One visit. Both documents. Full term.
Assessment to BS 9792:2025 and LACORS, floor plans to Portsmouth’s spec if you want them, and nothing paid up front.
Also serving the rest of the city and beyond — see fire risk assessments in Portsmouth or all areas.