Blackpool runs a selective licensing scheme across eight inner wards: Bloomfield, Brunswick, Claremont, Talbot, Tyldesley, Warbreck, Waterloo and Victoria. Inside those wards almost every privately rented house needs a licence, not just shared houses, which covers around 11,000 properties. The scheme started on 1 April 2025 and runs for five years. The licence costs £347 for the full five years for a landlord meeting the Blackpool standard, and £772 for one who does not. The current rules and fees are on Blackpool Council’s housing licences page. Larger shared houses of five or more tenants also need a mandatory HMO licence on top.
Selective licensing carries fire safety conditions, and the council found real problems when it inspected: 67% of the properties it looked at had at least one serious, Category 1 hazard. A licence is a housing matter, though. It does not produce the fire risk assessment, which is a separate legal duty.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service is the enforcing authority
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service enforces fire safety law across Blackpool. They can inspect without notice, serve enforcement and prohibition notices, and prosecute. They will not write the assessment for you, but they will give advice, and a prohibition notice can shut a property the same day. When they audit they want the written assessment and they want its measures actually in place.
The responsible person is whoever controls the premises. For a let property that is the landlord or the agent.
Converted guesthouses, holiday flats and bedsits
Blackpool has a building type that most towns do not: former guesthouses and boarding houses behind the promenade, in central wards like Talbot, Brunswick and Bloomfield, carved up into self contained flats and bedsits. These are some of the hardest premises to make safe, because the only escape usually runs back through the building past other people’s front doors. The assessment turns on the fire doors, the protected staircase and the alarm system that ties the whole building together. A tall converted house with one way out is a very different job from a two up two down, and it is where a cheap, generic report does the most harm.
If you rent from the council or a housing association, start with them, because they may already hold an assessment for the block.
The licence and the assessment are two separate duties
The selective licence comes from Blackpool Council. The fire risk assessment is a duty under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The licence does not cover the assessment, and the fire duty applies whether or not the property sits inside a licensing ward. If you let a property, run a business, or manage a building with shared parts, you need the written assessment kept current.
What a Blackpool report should actually name
A report that could have been written for any town is not suitable and sufficient for a converted seafront house split into flats. It should say where the alarms and fire doors are, whether the staircase stays usable if a fire starts on the ground floor, and how each flat is separated from the escape route. For a converted guesthouse it should deal with the actual layout, not leave “common parts” as a heading with nothing under it.
Checking an assessor in Blackpool
There is no official register of fire risk assessors, in Blackpool or anywhere else, so the checking is down to whoever pays the invoice. Ask for qualifications, professional body membership, indemnity insurance and a sample report before you appoint. The full list of questions, and what a good answer sounds like, is on what a fire risk assessment costs.
What it costs in Blackpool
The building sets the price, not the postcode. A small terraced rental in Layton is a morning; a converted guesthouse of six flats with one staircase is not. Anything over 11 metres brings the fixed fire door checks with it. The national ranges, and what moves a quote inside them, are on what a fire risk assessment costs. Ask for a fixed price against a written description of the property rather than an hourly rate.
Selective licensing in Blackpool
My rental is an ordinary house, not an HMO. Do I need a licence?
Inside the eight designated wards, yes. Selective licensing covers almost all privately rented houses there, not only shared houses. Check the council page to confirm your street is in the scheme.
Does the licence replace the fire risk assessment?
No. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service will still expect the written assessment, and the licence does not provide one.
My property is outside the eight wards. Am I clear?
You may not need a selective licence, but the fire risk assessment still applies to any let property, and a five person share still needs an HMO licence.
Getting a quote from an assessor covering Blackpool
Describe the premises and we will pass it to assessors covering Blackpool. Say whether it is a single house, a converted guesthouse of several flats, or a five person HMO.
Not in Blackpool? See all the areas we cover.