Trust & Methodology
Locastica checks official council sources and keeps the evidence visible. This page explains what is checked, where the evidence comes from, and how confidence and freshness are handled.
Locastica checks whether a property falls within a licensing scheme designated by an English council. This includes selective licensing, additional HMO licensing, and mandatory HMO licensing where councils have published designation information.
The check starts with a postcode, resolves to the relevant local authority, and returns the licensing schemes that may apply based on the council’s published designations. Where available, the answer also includes licensing fee information and fee structure context.
Every answer traces back to a published council source. This includes formal designation documents, council web pages describing active schemes, consultation notices, scheme boundary maps where available, and published fee schedules where fee data is shown.
Locastica does not infer scheme boundaries from third-party data or approximate coverage areas. If a council has not published clear designation information, the answer reflects that uncertainty rather than guessing.
Each answer includes a verification date showing when the council position was last checked. If a review is pending or a scheme is approaching its end date, that context is included in the result.
Freshness is not a guarantee of real-time accuracy. Council positions and fees can change between verification passes. The verification date allows you or your team to assess whether the answer is current enough for your use case.
Not all council positions are equally clear. Locastica shows how reliable the current answer is without hiding caveats:
Clear answer
The council position is clear, source-backed, and recent enough to rely on in a normal decision.
Review due
Something has changed or is approaching a decision point. The answer stays visible with a prompt to re-check the source.
Visible caveat
The council source exists but the evidence is ambiguous or incomplete. The result explains what is uncertain so teams can judge whether to proceed.
No reliable answer yet
If the council position cannot be stated responsibly, Locastica does not present a misleading result as settled fact.
Council positions are checked on a rolling schedule. When a scheme review, new designation, or boundary change is detected, the affected answers are re-verified and updated.
Where council information is incomplete, Locastica keeps the uncertainty visible and revisits the source record before treating the position as settled.
Locastica is not legal advice. The product provides licensing intelligence based on published council sources, but it does not replace professional advice where a licensing question has legal implications.
Locastica does not claim universal perfection, complete national certainty, or guaranteed compliance. Where the evidence is incomplete or under review, the product says so.
If you need detail about how a specific council position was verified, or want to discuss evidence quality for your use case, get in touch.