A search for doubly-charged Higgs bosons with pairs of prompt, isolated, highly energetic leptons with the same electric charge is presented. The search uses the data sample corresponding to 36.1 fb of integrated luminosity collected in 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC at the centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The search scans through various doubly-charged Higgs branching ratio () hypotheses, where , in several exclusive signal regions. No significant evidence of signal was observed and corresponding limits on the production cross-section and consequently the lower limit on were derived at 95% CL. Defining , the observed lower limit on mass varies from 770 GeV to 870 GeV (850 GeV expected) for and is still above 450 GeV, for both observed and expected, for for any combination of partial branching ratios.