HMO conversion - worth paying council for advice?

HMO Licensing

Hello everyone.

I'm very new to this landlording business - having inherited properties from my late father.

We have an empty 4 bedroom HMO that needs full refurbishment. The plan is to convert it to a 5 bedroom HMO and pass it on to Serco to manage. This means it will need a mandatory HMO license.

I've hired an architect who has drawn up plans that appear to meet the requirements - but I'm wondering if I should use Salford council's HMO advice service (contactus.salford.gov.uk/>

The cost is £384 if I manage to get all the work done quickly - or £880 if I don't. Set against the cost of the full refurbishment - it isn't a huge amount of cash, but I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with this or similar services and whether they are worth paying for? The last thing I want is to have the refurb and conversion done and then find out that I don't meet the requirements.

Any advice would be very gratefully recieved.

Thanks,

Kiran