Background Information on HMO/student housing situation in Loughborough

USE CLASSES ORDER (UCO)

Loughborough is a small town with a large University, where inner town areas have been effectively taken over by the private rental market focussed exclusively on the provision of student housing. The key message from SARG (Storer & Ashby Area Residents’ Group) is for government to recognise the need of a change within the UCO so that the definition of an HMO within the Housing Act is adopted by the Planning system, and so that HMO’s are removed from Use Class 3, giving some degree of planning control. This would give local authorities the ability to effectively balance communities by avoiding concentrations of HMO’s in any particular area of a town/city.

The Government’s position:

Studentification: A Guide to Opportunities, Challenges and Practice, produced in conjunction with the DfES, had its Westminster launch on 27 June 2006. Consideration of changes to legislation was explicitly excluded from the remit when the research project was commissioned – see comments from Alison Barlow, Community Relations Officer, Loughborough University, below. The raison d’etre for UCOs is that they serve as a deregulatory mechanism providing the need to remove cumbersome steps in the planning process. Class C3 does not differentiate between a family of six, six young professionals or six students living together. The provisions of the Housing Act 2004 (HMO licensing) may ameliorate the position to some extent. Discretionary powers under the Act, classifying as HMO’s, households of 3 or more unrelated persons living together, may be useful in areas where concentrations of HMO’s cause particular problems. [SARG comment: It does not however, address the problem of the uncontrolled spread of such concentrations.]
It is on record in its Housing Research Summary 228, published July 2006, that the Government has acknowledged that some of the problems in the private rented sector arise from student housing. The Report of the DCLG Committee on Coastal Towns calls for greater powers for Local Authorities to control HMO’s - so does the new Councillors Campaign for Balanced Communities - so does the new All-Party Parliamentary Balanced & Sustainable Communities Group.

SARG’s Concerns

In order to help maintain community balance and promote social cohesion, SARG’s concern is the need for a distinction in planning terms between housing occupied by families and housing occupied by 3 or more unrelated persons living together.
SARG has lobbied government ministers directly and via Andy Reed MP on this issue since 2001. Because the local planning authority has not had this means of control, we now have more than 500 student-lets in an area of ten streets once favoured by first time buyers and young families. The council is attempting to exert greater control over extensions to student housing in such areas. In order to be effective, the Student Housing SPD 2005 needs constant vigilance by an army of enforcement officers. It has been successfully challenged by a landlord in a recent Appeal.
SARG specifically argues that ‘family houses’ should be defined separately from HMO’s or shared houses within an amended UCO, necessitating planning permission for a change of use and giving local authorities more control over mixed communities so as to maintain balance. The initiative by the Northern Ireland Office to alter the relevant UCO by reducing the number of unrelated people living together as a single household within Class C3 means that all HMO’s are subject to planning control [sui generis]. Charnwood Borough Council has previously lobbied the ODPM for such a change and formally resolved, as a matter of policy, to support such an amendment to the UCO in England & Wales as have Bath, Newcastle and Southampton Councils. As long ago as 2004, Nottingham City Council, Nottingham Action Group on HMOs with their local MP, Leeds HMO Lobby and the National HMO Lobby lobbied the ODPM Minister, Keith Hill on this very topic and has continued to do so.

Loughborough University

The Community Relations Officer at Loughborough University (Alison Barlow), comments that the University Vice Chancellor, Shirley Pearce, supports SARG’s position on the UCO question. Alison attended the launch of the Good Practice Guide on Studentification in Westminster in June 2006. She argues that the guidance says nothing new to Universities like Loughborough and was never intended to actually look at legislation. It does nothing to tackle a national problem which is creating unsustainable communities and which only national legislation can address. A change within the UCO is required, allowing greater planning control for local authorities throughout England to control HMO’s (as defined by the Housing Act).

Charnwood Borough Council

In some areas of Loughborough student households account for as many as 90% of the homes leaving the residual host community with a catalogue of problems ranging from anti-social behaviour during term time to a sense of isolation with greater vulnerability to crime during vacations. Local businesses and services have responded to the student market with the proliferation of fast food enterprises whose hours are difficult to regulate occasioning late night disturbance and littering. The local school has been closed.

The student community too are understood to be at greater risk of falling victim to crime and may be ill served by some land lords. These problems are enumerated in more detail in the Council’s adopted Supplementary Planning Document which may be viewed by clicking the link below:

Critically, in preparing that SPD in close consultation with the communities affected, it had to be acknowledged that the planning system has limited powers to control the expansion of the buy for let market. The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 2006 defines a dwelling so as to include up to six people living together as a single household. Perversely the Housing Act 2004 recognises a property as a House in Multiple Occupation where it is occupied by three or more unrelated people.

The current Use Classes Order is founded upon the premise that the pattern of occupation associated with up to six people living together as a single household is indistinguishable from that of a family. The experiences of the “host” community in Loughborough would suggest that that assumption is flawed.

Most family homes, it is argued, benefit from some form of organisation and management that regulates established norms and standards governing conduct and relationships. Houses in Multiple Occupation, in the absence of regulation and enforcement, benefit from no such controls. Where such houses proliferate, the incidence of aberrant and anti social behaviour, and unintentional pressure on services and facilities, is heightened to the detriment of local residential amenities.

Significant improvements can be achieved through engagement with the relevant authorities, land lords, long term residents and short term tenants. These are areas in which the Borough Council is actively working with partners in the development of a cross cutting Student Management Strategy. Critically, however, notwithstanding the advantages of such collaborative efforts, the very transience of the short term tenants necessitates a continuing programme of education and community building. These factors, it is suggested, indicate that there is a material change of use brought about by the “conversion” of family houses into houses in multiple occupation which manifests itself well before the current trigger for intervention at more than six people, afforded by the Use Classes Order.

In the light of these experiences, which are understood to be replicated in many other towns and city neighbourhoods situated in close proximity to successful universities and colleges, the Borough Council on 22nd March 2007 agreed to send an all party message to the government calling for an amendment to the Use Classes Order to afford local planning authorities greater powers to maintain viable, sustainable, inclusive, mixed communities in accordance with the intentions of PPS3 and the expressed preferences of the “host” communities.

Loughborough Students’ Union

We express our concern at the lack of opportunities for young graduates to live and work in the town; also our concern at the astonishing rate at which landlords take up available houses without proper regard as to their suitability as a student dwelling, and with particular relevance to health and safety concerns.