Council Tax information for landlords

If you are a landlord or managing agent, you should keep us informed of all tenancy changes as soon as they happen. This allows us to send accurate Council Tax bills out quickly and to the correct people.

There are two circumstances when you are responsible for paying the Council Tax:

• when your property is empty
• if your property is rented to several people as a HMO

For Council Tax, an HMO is a property that is occupied by several people, and they each have an individual tenancy agreement. They do not have a right to occupy the entire property. This is a different definition to the one used for HMO licensing. You will find more information on this on our HMO licencing pages.

If you have received a bill because we believe the property is empty but you have tenants, you must tell us as soon as the change occurs.

When is the tenant responsible?

If you rent the whole of your property to one person or family, or to joint tenants, your tenants are responsible for paying the Council Tax. We will send the bill to your tenants.

Tell us about a change in tenancy

What we need from you:

• the exact start and end dates of tenancies
• the full names of each tenant
• the previous and forwarding addresses of your tenants
• a copy of the tenancy agreement at the start of the tenancy
• a contact phone number in case we have any questions we need to ask you

If we request information that we need to calculate and issue Council Tax bills you must provide it to us within 21 days of our request. You can be fined if you do not give us the information or if you give us information that you know to be false.