An Interesting Planning Committee
We have long bemoaned the 'HMO Bad, Family House Good' Animal Farm style mantra that permeates meetings of the planning committee. The good news is that the tide might be turning but the past year has been bad for Portsmouth at the taxpayers expense.
What Transpired?
For many years now, HMOs that meet all of the rules have been recommended for approval by planning officers but are referred to the Planning Committee for discussion by local councillors and, once at committee, councillors bend over backwards to invent or justify reasons to refuse.
We have reported in the past the HMO with one toilet that could apparently be used by 12 people even though Licensing rules would forbid it (Donna Jones, Conservative) or the bed too near the window - a bed that was only on the drawing for illustrative purposes (Judith Smyth, Independent / Labour) or the bed next to a wall backing onto an equally imaginary and illustrative washing machine (Lee Hunt, Lib Dem). There are many more examples - these are simply to illustrate that the anti-HMO sentiment spreads across the whole council. All of these examples resulted in the rejection of the application that went to appeal and was then allowed - the appeal inspector confirming that the planning officer was correct. the application met all of Portsmouth's local rules and the applicant should be allowed to go ahead with the HMO.
Why does it matter? Three reasons - all the time a property is in the appeal process which can be up to 18 months, it is 6 or 7 rooms not available for letting. When Portsmouth's emergency housing budget has never been more stretched - choosing to lose so many rooms from the local housing market borders on the insane. Also, each of these appeals is estimated to cost around £2,500 and that is without the time spent by the officers who might be better employed getting some of the city's housing developments off the ground or the Local Plan completed and approved. And of course the 3rd reason, landlords are avoiding Portsmouth because the last thing they want is to make a big investment and then have the property sat empty for 18 months.
In an apparent attempt to reduce some of these shenanigans, this months planning meeting started with a reminder to councillors that 'lots of people objecting' has no bearing on their decision making and all decisions should and can only be made based on relevant planning law, meaning that if an HMO meets all the rules, then the councillors have a duty to approve the application.
This discussion was supported by a summary of appeals over the past year - 10 rejected HMOs went to appeal and of those, 1 was rejected because the appeal paperwork was incorrect and the other 9 were approved - meaning that councillors had failed to apply the rules correctly in any of these cases and had cost the taxpayer and local economy at least £250,000 as a result, if the £25,000 per appeal estimate is correct (based on £2,500 direct costs plus officer time, lost rent, emergency funding for the homeless, etc)
One other observation - councillors used to vote on applications and, if the vote was tied, the chair would then cast his or her vote to decide the matter. Under the new chair, the process is now that councillors including the chair vote and if a there is a tie when votes are counted including the chairs vote, then the chair decides - perhaps we will see a few HMO approvals overturned on the grounds that voting practices have changed - who knows - but we hope that common sense prevails and less pain needs to be endured submitting a perfectly good application for a perfectly legal HMO - we live in hope....