HouseFile UK property licensing checker MCP Server

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HouseFile UK property licensing checker is listed as active in the registry but did not answer our last check. It exposes 4 tools.

Checks whether a property in England is in a council's selective or HMO licensing scheme

Uptime history 22 days of history · worst day 0%

22 days agonow

1.1%

Uptime 24h

1 of 91 checks

Tools

read from the server

1108 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

What changed 3

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 23 October 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

25 Oct a tool changed the parameters it asks for check_property_licensing

23 Oct 2 tool descriptions were rewritten licensing_coverage, upcoming_licensing_changes

HouseFile UK property licensing checker does not always answer

Over the last week it answered 10.5% of our checks. We check every 15 minutes, so you hear about the next outage within the hour — not from your users.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 14 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add licensing --transport http https://www.housefile.app/mcp

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address

https://www.housefile.app/mcp

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.licensing]
url = "https://www.housefile.app/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "licensing": {
      "url": "https://www.housefile.app/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "licensing": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://www.housefile.app/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 4

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

council

list_council_schemes

Lists a council’s licensing schemes from HouseFile’s records: in force, starting soon, proposed, and ended in the last 12 months, each with its area, dates, fee, source link and last verified date. Takes a council name, part of a name or a GSS code. If several councils match, it returns them to choose from.

licensing

licensing_coverage

Which councils HouseFile’s records cover: each council with published schemes, with how many, how many are in force and when they were last verified, and the councils checked and found to run none. Use it to tell the user honestly whether their area is covered, and list_council_schemes for one council’s detail.

property

check_property_licensing

Looks up a postcode in England in HouseFile’s records of council licensing schemes and returns each scheme in force there, with its dates, fee, source link and the date the records were last verified, plus the national HMO rule. Schemes not in force yet are listed under upcoming. It works to postcode precision, so near a scheme’s edge it says so. Give occupants and households to settle the mandatory HMO test in England.

upcoming

upcoming_licensing_changes

What’s coming: schemes proposed or starting soon, and recent changes to schemes in HouseFile’s records (started, ended, fee, dates or area changed), newest first. Optionally for one council, and for a number of months ahead and back (6 by default, at most 24). For all councils the lists stop at the 15 soonest schemes and the 10 latest changes, with the totals; ask for one council to see all of its own.

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://www.housefile.app/mcp	streamable-http	answering	50 ms	14 min ago

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HouseFile UK property licensing checker — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can HouseFile UK property licensing checker do?

It exposes 4 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: check_property_licensing, licensing_coverage, list_council_schemes, upcoming_licensing_changes. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →

Is HouseFile UK property licensing checker working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 1 of 91 checks got a reply (1.1%), average response time 1108 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

The registry lists HouseFile UK property licensing checker as active — why does it not respond?

The official MCP registry stores what the author submitted; it does not verify that the server still runs. We check the endpoint ourselves, and this one does not answer. Catalogues that copy the registry without checking will show it as working.

How do I connect HouseFile UK property licensing checker?

Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.

Does HouseFile UK property licensing checker need an API key?

No. HouseFile UK property licensing checker completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 4 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is HouseFile UK property licensing checker?

It answers our handshake in 1108 ms on average, which is faster than 3% of all working MCP servers we measure. That is on the slow side — worth knowing if the tool sits inside an interactive loop. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.