Selective Licensing Expands Across Islington on 23 November 2026: What Renters Need to Know
Most privately rented homes in ten Islington wards now need a council licence, and in the seven new wards landlords must apply by 23 November 2026. Until now, selective licensing covered three wards: Finsbury Park, Tollington and Hillrise. Seven more are being added, including Barnsbury, Highbury and Tufnell Park.
If you rent in Islington, or you are about to leave a rented home there, a few things change and a few things very deliberately do not. We clean homes across the borough when tenancies end, so this is written from the practical side of a move-out rather than the legal one. None of it is legal advice.
Which wards are covered
| Ward | Covered since |
|---|---|
| Finsbury Park | 20 May 2024 |
| Tollington | 20 May 2024 |
| Hillrise | 20 May 2024 |
| Barnsbury | 23 November 2026 |
| Caledonian | 23 November 2026 |
| Highbury | 23 November 2026 |
| Junction | 23 November 2026 |
| Laycock | 23 November 2026 |
| Mildmay | 23 November 2026 |
| Tufnell Park | 23 November 2026 |
Both designations run for five years from their start date.
One point worth clearing up, because it comes up a lot. The council's 2025 consultation proposed nine new wards and included Canonbury and Clerkenwell. The scheme that was finally designated covers seven, and those two are not in it. If you read about the consultation at the time, the list you saw is not the list that took effect.
Ward boundaries do not follow neighbourhood names, so an address two streets from a ward edge can sit either side of it. Check the specific address on the council's page on which licence you need, which has a postcode tool that returns the ward, rather than going by the name of the area.
Separately, Islington's additional licensing scheme has covered shared homes across the whole borough since 1 February 2026, and runs for five years. That one is not tied to wards at all.
What it costs, and who pays
A selective licence costs £850 for the whole property. It is paid in two parts: Part A when the landlord applies, covering the council's processing, and Part B if the licence is granted, covering administration and enforcement.
Three discounts are available and they stack, all taken off Part B: £75 if the landlord is accredited with an approved body, £50 if the property has an EPC rating of A, B or C, and £25 for renewing with no gap between licences. The fees are set out on the council's application page, and they are non-refundable once an application is submitted, including if the property is later sold or taken off the market.
A licence can be granted for a maximum of five years, but the council can issue a shorter one and will say why. Operating the property without a licence beforehand is one reason it gives.
The landlord pays. Not the tenant. A licensing fee is not a cost that can be passed to you through the tenancy, and it is not a reason for a rent increase at renewal either.
If you rent in one of these wards
Your tenancy agreement does not change. Licensing is an obligation on the landlord. Your rent, your deposit and what you owe at the end of the tenancy are unaffected by it.
Your deposit still has to be protected. Since the main provisions of the Renters' Rights Act came into force on 1 May 2026, assured shorthold tenancies have been abolished and tenancies run as rolling periodic ones with no fixed end date. Deposit protection rules still apply in the same way, and the government's guidance sets out what your landlord has to do and by when.
If your home should be licensed and is not, that is worth knowing before you hand the keys back, not after. A rent repayment order can cover rent paid during an unlicensed period. Get advice from the council or a housing adviser while you are still a tenant.
The standard at check-out does not change. This is the one most people get wrong. Licensing sets conditions about safety, management and the condition of the property. It says nothing about how clean the place has to be when you leave. That still comes from your check-in inventory and your tenancy agreement, exactly as before.
If you are a landlord
Between tenancies is the easiest window to get licensing sorted. The property is empty, certificates can be renewed, alarms tested and anything broken dealt with without working around someone's week.
Two things worth knowing alongside licensing. A possession order under section 8 is no longer available unless the deposit is protected in an authorised scheme and the prescribed information has been served, with anti-social behaviour grounds the only exception. Deposit compliance is now the floor under everything else.
And the council licence is not the only registration. Landlords of assured or regulated tenancies also have to register themselves and each property with the government's own rental property service, separately from the Islington licence. For London, the deadline is 14 October 2027.
Worth being clear about one thing: a professional clean is not a safety check. We will tell you if an appliance is not working or something looks damaged, because we see every cupboard and every appliance, but that is an observation, not an inspection.
For a licensed property, a dated record of condition at every changeover is worth having. Every move-out clean we do finishes with a signed checklist, an invoice and before-and-after photographs, which gives you that record without arranging anything extra.
Islington has a lot of shared housing, from student houses to professional house shares. Those sit under the borough-wide additional scheme, not the new selective one, so nothing changes for them on 23 November.
The question we actually get asked about shared houses is a different one: when the tenancy ends, who is responsible for the kitchen, the bathroom and the hallway? The answer is in the tenancy agreement, and it is usually all of you jointly. Where housemates leave on different dates, we can clean a single room, or the shared areas on their own, and come back for the rest.
Moving out in Islington?
Check whether the address is in one of the ten wards. Have the check-in inventory and your own photographs to hand. Do not rush the key handover, because once the keys are back you have lost your access to put anything right.
If you want the practical sequence for the rest of it, parking a van, bins, bulky items and the order to do things in, our Islington move-out and checkout guide covers it, and moving out of an Islington flat goes into what changes between a Georgian conversion, a mansion block and a council block.
When you are ready to book, here is what we cover with our end of tenancy cleaning in Islington.
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