Is your holiday let a house in multiple occupation?

The standard test, condition by condition

Under section 254(2), all six of the following must be true at once:

• the property consists of one or more units of living accommodation that are not a self-contained flat or flats;
• the living accommodation is occupied by people who do not form a single household;
• their occupation is the only use of that accommodation;
• rent or other consideration is payable for at least one of them; and
• two or more of the households share one or more basic amenities, or the accommodation lacks one or more of them.

The Act defines basic amenities narrowly: a toilet, personal washing facilities, or cooking facilities. A self-contained flat means a separate set of premises forming part of a building, where the whole or a material part lies above or below another part, and where all three basic amenities are available for the exclusive use of the occupants.

The condition that usually decides it

That is why a genuine short-stay let, taken by successive unconnected guests who each live somewhere else, generally does not satisfy the standard test. Notice what the reasoning does not depend on: not the number of bedrooms, not whether the guests know each other, not whether you provide linen, not the nightly rate. Those are the facts owners volunteer first, and they are beside the point.

Schedule 14 will not rescue you

There is no line for holiday accommodation. An owner cannot point at Schedule 14 and be done. And note the carve-out inside the carve-out: even a listed building stays inside Part 1 of the Act, the part that deals with assessing hazards in residential premises. Falling outside the HMO definition is not the same as falling outside the Act.

What we would do with the answer

Write the analysis down while the facts are fresh, one paragraph per condition, with the booking data that supports it. If the property has ever been let on longer terms, record the dates. When you approach the council, bring that note rather than a question, because a specific factual account gets a specific answer; a vague enquiry gets a cautious one. Then keep the file, because the officer who asks in two years will not be the officer who answered.