Licensing private rented property in Slough

Overview

Additional and Selective Property Licensing

We're asking for your views.

Slough Borough Council wants to make sure private rented properties provide residents with a choice of safe, quality, and well-managed accommodation. We are keen to hear your views on a proposal to introduce additional and selective licensing across all of the Borough’s wards.

Tenants, residents, landlords, letting agents, and businesses, living or operating in the Borough could be affected by the proposals.

If additional and selective licensing schemes are introduced, landlords of privately rented property in the borough would be required to obtain a licence from the Council.

The additional licensing designation would extend licensing requirements to smaller Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO) that do not meet the mandatory threshold. This would include properties occupied by three or four people forming two or more households, and who share some basic facilities or amenities such as a kitchen or bathroom.

Additional licensing would also require what are known as Section 257 HMOs to be licensed. These are converted buildings of self-contained flats where the conversion did not comply with the appropriate building standards in place at the time and still do not.

The selective licensing designation would require all properties that are rented to private tenants (e.g. a family, single occupant or two sharers) to be licensed. It would not cover properties that are already licensed as HMOs.

The Council objectives for the proposed licensing schemes are:

• To improve housing conditions in the Borough’s private rented sector by proactively identifying and remediating poor housing conditions.
• To improve property management standards and reduce risks related to overcrowding by ensuring that licence conditions are complied with and licence holders are “fit and proper”.
• To protect vulnerable tenants by ensuring landlords and agents manage properties professionally
• To increase tenant awareness of the minimum standards they can expect in rented accommodation and what their other tenancy rights are.
• To reduce anti-social behaviour arising from private rented accommodation by compelling licence holders to investigate complaints and take appropriate action in line with the licence conditions.

An evidence report and summary report, which can be downloaded from the links within this page, outline our proposals and approach in more detail. The survey seeks your views about these proposals, our objectives, our proposed licence conditions, our proposed licensing fees, and the alternatives that you think we should consider.

The consultation on this proposal starts on Wednesday 15^th July 2026 and will run for 10 weeks, closing at midnight on Wednesday 23^rd September 2026.

Written submissions by post (before 21^st September 2026) to: 

Housing Regulation,
Observatory House,
25 Windsor Road,
Slough,
SL1 2EL

Written submissions by email (before 23^rd September 2026): propertylicensing@slough.gov.uk

For a physical copy of the survey, contact: propertylicensing@slough.gov.uk

Discretionary Licensing Evidence Report 2026

Discretionary Licensing Evidence Report - Summary 2026

Why your views matter

Housing is a key priority for residents and the council. It plays a significant part in all our lives. The location, type, and quality of the homes in which we live has a major impact on the rest of our lives including how children perform at school, the employment we can access and how long we can expect to live. We therefore urge you to consider our property licensing proposals carefully.

Data protection

This questionnaire and the information we collect will be used for the purposes of evidence-based decision making on discretionary property licensing. We are committed to the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK General Data Protection Regulations. By continuing to complete this questionnaire and submitting your responses, you are consenting to us processing this data.

This will be used to make decisions in a public forum, and the results will be published online, and anonymous data may be accessed by third parties to validate the results of the survey.

We will only retain the data collected for as long as is necessary and, after the period determined by our Data Protection Officer, this data will be destroyed in accordance with our IT and Information Security Procedures.

Please refer to our data privacy notice for further details on how we protect your privacy.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please email DataProtectionOfficer@slough.gov.uk