University city could get tighter controls on HMOs

A city could introduce restrictions on houses in multiple occupation (HMO) after cross-party council consensus that action was needed.

In Cambridge, cited as one of the most expensive places to live in the UK, HMOs for six or fewer are currently allowed under permitted development, but a petition had called for HMOs for three or more to need planning permission.

The city council's Labour leader Katie Thornburrow said last week she agreed that direction was "a highly important tool" but it would need "watertight, comprehensive evidence" to be implemented "legally and robustly".

A report is due before cabinet in autumn to "map out" how the direction, known as an Article Four, will be implemented.

There are nearly 1,000 HMOs licensed with Cambridge City Council and the petition also called for a threshold of 10% HMO properties within a 100m radius.

They are regulations similar to those that cities such as Oxford and Bristol have already implemented.

Thornburrow said officers had spent the last year preparing a report for the authority's cabinet.

Liberal Democrat councillor Katie Porrer said: "This is not, for us, about trying to remove them from the housing stock or demonising those who live in them.

"This for us is about better living standards for tenants and better behaviour from the minority of landlords who fail to manage their HMOs properly and who give a bad name to this type of housing provision in our city.

"What we need in Cambridge is well-managed, decent and livable HMOs which integrate into our wider community and this means landlords and management companies need to step up and provide this."

Green councillor Kathryn Fisher told the meeting on 16 July: "The fact that [HMOs] are proliferating, and that we have so many, is a sign that this council has failed to provide enough council housing.

"I'm reluctant on the brutal 10% cut because it feels like it's not actually solving the root of the problem, which is if you make it so it's easier to make more money by cramming more people into a building that's what landlords will do.

"I don't really want to see 10% bad housing with people crammed in – we shouldn't be happy to accept any level of substandard housing."

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