The city of Stoke-on-Trent has revealed one of Britain’s most severe crackdowns on HMOs as its Reform-run council reacts to voter concerns that too many properties of this kind are ‘tearing streets apart’.
Its new measures include an Article 4 Direction removing automatic developments rights when family homes are converted into HMOs, which currently do not require planning permission. Also, the council is proposing to cap the total number of HMOs in each of the city’s wards.
This will be set at 4% of residential properties for wards where there are already a very high number of HMOs, 2.5% for wards where there are a high number, and 1.5% for all other wards.
The rules say there cannot be two HMOs side-by-side with a single frontage, and other homes should not be ‘sandwiched’ between two HMOs.
Stoke-on-Trent is also now consulting on a city-wide ‘additional licensing’ scheme, which will if approved put all the city’s smaller HMOs under regulation.
The proposals – which will be considered by the city’s cabinet next week – are part of drive to limit the growth of HMOs and address concerns raised by residents about the impact of high concentrations of shared housing, although the council says it wants to ‘strike a balance’.
Councillor Duncan Walker stated: “Houses of multiple occupation have a place in terms of meeting the significant housing needs within the city – they can be an important step on the ladder for people looking for a home, but they need to be of high quality and proportionate.
“For this reason, they need to be strictly controlled to ensure they do not have a disproportionate impact on neighbourhoods and are of a sufficiently high standard. So, we are proposing to take the toughest action we can to ensure this.
“The evidence in Stoke-on-Trent shows HMOs are concentrated in a number of urban neighbourhoods, and that the impact – in terms of noise, waste, and demand on parking – are most acute where concentrations are highest.”
The announcement follows a trend – several other Reform-run councils have announced similar, albeit not as extreme, crackdowns including earlier this year in Newcastle.
Comments (2)
My experience of HMOs in York is they are typically of poor quality, bring drug usage and dealing, drunkeness, and general antisocial behaviour into decent residential areas. This leads residents to despair that their once nice area is falling apart, and the value of their homes is suffering. We have one on our road of early-Victorian townhouses. It is Grade 2 Listed and needs a lot of work, but the listing means certain work can’t be done e.g. Windows, and it is simply too expensive for the owner to maintain well. It’s a mess, but at least we never see the tenants. 2 streets away, two down-at-heel Victorian townhouses were crack dens, with frequent police activity. Fortunately, they were sold and brought back into residential family use.
If there are lots of houses sitting empty, the councils should be charging ‘long term empty +100%’ council tax at the very least, and if they’ve been empty for a long time and for no good reason, they should be compulsorily purchased at a significant discount for social housing, but not for migrants and refugees.
Below-average local earnings combined with a shrinking social housing pool and a “war on HMO’s” will result in….? You guessed it, higher rental prices!
Without bringing empty homes (of which there are apparently a lot of in Stoke-on-Trent) back into the fold, or without housebuilding (of which there are a lot of delays and abnormal costs in Stoke-on-Trent), the Local Authority in their infinite wisdom are pricing out low income workers. I dont claim to be able to see the future, but it doesn’t take a psychic to see where this is going…