Inspections · Licensed HMOs · quarterly
HMO Inspection.
Rooms recorded one by one, communal areas separated out, and the fire and safety provision checked on every visit.
What It Is For
The job it does.
Lincoln is a university city, so a large share of the round is shared houses. An HMO inspection does double duty: the same condition record as any mid-term, plus the things a licensing officer asks about between renewals. It builds the file you want to already have when the council calls.
What we record
- Each let room individually, by room number, against the inventory
- Communal areas separated out: kitchen, bathrooms, hallways, stairs, garden
- Fire doors: present, self-closing, not wedged; escape route clear
- Smoke and heat alarms in every required position, tested
- Occupancy: how many people appear to be living there, against the licence
- Waste, bins and the exterior, which is where most HMO complaints start
What you get
- A report split room by room, so a single room's history can be pulled out
- Flagged items first, with the fire and safety points at the top
- Photographs exhibit-numbered per room
- A running file across visits, which is what a licence renewal needs
Inspections · The Interval
The four kinds of inspection.
Residential · during a tenancy
Mid-Term Inspection
A short visit every three to six months. Condition, obvious maintenance, damp and mould, and whether the tenancy is being kept to.
OpenLicensed HMOs · quarterly
This pageHMO Inspection
Rooms recorded one by one, communal areas separated out, and the fire and safety provision checked on every visit.
Commercial · during a lease
Commercial Interim Inspection
A periodic walk of the unit during the term, checking the tenant is keeping to the repairing covenants.
OpenEmpty · on a contract
Vacant Property Visits
Short dated visits to an empty unit. Security, water, heating, signs of entry, damage. Photographed and logged.
Open
EXH 009 · Landing · fire door closer
Not a licensing inspection
The council does its own licensing inspection and sets its own conditions. Ours is the landlord's own record between those visits: what is there, what state it is in, and what has changed. We record; the council decides.
Notice still applies, room by room
Each tenant has their own room and their own right to notice. We give at least 24 hours in writing for every room, and record any room we could not access rather than quietly skipping it.
Asked & answered.
Quarterly is the common interval for a licensed HMO, and some licence conditions specify it. Student HMOs in Lincoln are often walked at the start of term, mid-year and at the end.
We record them: whether the door is there, whether it self-closes, whether it is wedged open, and whether each alarm is present and sounds when tested. We are not a fire risk assessor and we do not issue a fire risk assessment.
It is recorded as no access, with the date and the notice given. A pattern of refusals is itself useful evidence, and it is far better than a report that quietly implies the room was seen.
No. We record condition and what is present. We do not assess structure, fire safety risk, or licensing compliance as a judgement.
Read Before You Book
Worth ten minutes.
Mid-term inspections: how often, what to record, and the notice rules
The interval, the notice, the checklist, and why the mid-term is the visit that stops month-four problems becoming month-eighteen bills.
ReadWhat a check-in inventory must include, and why most fall short
The seven things a check-in inventory needs before it will carry a deposit claim, and the three ways a home-made one usually fails.
ReadFair wear and tear vs damage: how deposit adjudicators decide
What counts as wear and tear, what counts as damage, why betterment is never allowed, and how an inventory makes the difference provable.
Read