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PCC Debate Publishing Vulnerable HMO Details

HMO

PDPLA Vice Chair, Alwin Oliver, made a deputation at the December 2024 Full Council meeting to express our dismay at the Portsmouth Independence Party motion to publicise the addresses of the 40+ PCC owned HMOs in the city.  We need not have bothered as every other councillor was equally aghast and the motion was defeated.   That said, we are always keen to get our members perspective across and challenge anti HMO (and anti landlord) rhetoric where we find it.

What Was The Motion


Unregistered HMOs in Council Stock

Proposed by Councillor Russell Simpson

Seconded by Councillor George Madgwick

HMOs are a blight on Portsmouth family homes. As part of the current local planning guidance, we have a 10% threshold within a 50m radius of HMO licenses allowance. The council's policy document states that we look for a "Mixed and Balanced community".

However, what many aren't aware of is the large volume of houses, owned by the council, that have multiple unrelated people living within them. There is no obligation on PCC as landlord/owner to apply for a HMO Licence and these properties are not included within the figures.

Certain buildings, that meet a set regulated criteria, are exempt from HMO regulations, under the Housing Act 2004, that would usually be defined as a HMO. These buildings include, but are not limited to, managed or controlled buildings by private registered providers of social housing, a co-operative society & local authorities.

The above lacuna is never mentioned when considering new applications for HMOs and allows many undeclared properties to exist within communities in Portsmouth that already have a high yield of HMOs. When exempt HMOs are included there are a number of roads across the city that are approaching the 10% threshold or even exceeding it. This also includes excessive HMOs in a row where PCC policy states no more than two next to each other.

In order to support mixed and balanced communities as well as allowing for transparency of our planning system and local community demographics, Council requests that the Cabinet Member for Planning Policy & City Development considers a report at a future decision meeting to review the current exempt HMOs alongside the current licensed HMOs to identify any roads/areas where the combined total exceeds the 10% threshold.

With this information, the cabinet member is requested to consider resolving that the planning department includes all exempt HMOs owned by the council and other exempt providers alongside licensed HMOs as a material consideration when private HMO applications are determined.

For information purposes, the report to also detail any roads/areas where the combined total exceeds the 10% threshold or any roads/areas that are close to the 10% limit when inclusive of registered and exempt HMOs.

What Did We Say?

Thank you for allowing me to address you today. It seems nothing arouses more passion among a section of our population than HMOs, indeed far more so than any other form of high density housing.

Before I address the issue, I want to share with you some concerns I have about the quality of debate. I don't come here to put anyone's back up, but some issues need to be addressed.

Councillors have in recent years used appalling and inflammatory language which does not help the debate, and ultimately limits access to housing particularly for lower income people in our community.

We have seen appalling and inflammatory language used about landlords.

We have also seen Cllrs making attempts to bend the law to make any attempt to oppose HMOs, in direct conflict with robust and accurate advice from your own solicitors, and leading to a HMO refusal being overturned just this year.

In 2024, a planning consultant and PDPLA member, a woman, has publicly been told to "hang her head in shame" by a Cllr, only to subsequently be addressed at a later meeting by a member of the public, within the council chamber and in front of a councillor, the offender stating she hoped our member died in a ditch.

This goes beyond debate, it is a criminal offence, made worse by both the chairman of that meeting and the Cllr who reportedly witnessed that conduct refusing to report the crime, as you would have hoped under the Nolan principles.

It is hard enough to get women involved in senior roles in the construction industry as it is. This does nothing to help.

Those of you who know me know I have pretty thick skin, but nobody comes to work to face abuse. Aside anything else, the people of our community deserve better.

If offences are committed against landlords or abusive behaviour occurs, please deal with it.

Now to the issues. The motion before you stretches the point of the legislation, in our view it is a push to far. Your aim is to reduce the number of HMOs but the outcome is that you are creating a poverty trap for those least able to afford it.

There is a vicious circle here – less HMOs mean less homes for those least able to afford them, which means more homelessness, which means more emergency accommodation, which means more funding for expensive social care providers in the private sector which fund large scale HMO developments – that is surely not what you aim to achieve? Especially as those who live in these properties will never be able to afford the high rents.

In respect of planning, the intention of the government is clear, more housing is needed and in our view HMOs have a part of that. Put simply, shared housing is a fast way of providing accommodation and is popular with workers coming from overseas to work in our essential services, as well as other low income single people.

They all need housing. The alternative, predominantly studio and one bed flats put pressure on the rest of the housing market and would drive up prices across the private rental sector, on top of price increases driven by interest rates pushing up landlord costs.

We see this motion as yet another shabby attack on HMOs in general. I have no objection to the debate but it should be respectful and within the law.

While we are on the subject of driving landlords out of the markets, I would urge you to review your utterly counter productive licensing scheme. As we predicted, smaller HMOs are being forced out of the market, driving up rents for those tenants displaced into newer and much more expensive HMOs. We stated in our evidence that additional licensing would not help tenants the only meaningful effect is to close small HMOs and drive up the demand for larger ones, at higher costs to the tenants.

Just as an aside, your emergency housing budget is now more than doubled, and those living in HMO rooms now have to work 15 hours per week to pay their rent, whereas before additional licensing was introduced it was more like 11.

It does not help those returning to work nor does it help the costs of providing emergency accommodation to those in need. As we predicted in our evidence when you considered additional licensing, the Super HMO model is now becoming the dominant model. The very opposite of what you intended with small HMOs largely going out of the market or sold to developers. For those on lower incomes it would be nice to offer a choice.

Next year, our association celebrates 40 years representing landlords. Looking back one of the first issues we tackled with PCC was about HMOs.

It seems the debate has been stagnant since then. We have welcomed members regardless of race, colour, sex, gender, disability (I suffer a hidden disability) or any other ground.

No organisation is perfect, but we have robust codes of practice and we educate landlords to drive up standards and part of that work is tackling stereotypes in the provision of housing, as you would expect.

We have robust policies on tackling anti-social behaviour and our work has been included in clauses in the Renters Rights bill to support that work in the future, where it occurs.

Therefore and finally, and on the subject of those who oppose HMOs and by extension those who live in them, can I respectfully point out that nearly everyone who attends an anti HMO protest is white and around 70% of those living in professional (i.e. non student) HMOs are non white, often guest workers as I have described.

Is that the impact you intended? I am afraid the result of anti HMO rhetoric portrays us in a very bad light to those guest workers we should be welcoming, and who help us function as a city.

This motion is not worthy of you and I urge you to reject it.

Alwin Oliver

Vice Chairman, PDPLA 

And What Did Councillors Say?

The debate in the chamber got quite heated - the issue being that the PIP (Portsmouth Independence Party) wanted details of the 43 PCC owned  and the 2 leased  HMOs to be published - presumably to aid their calculations of the 10% rule when applications come before planning.  But planning officers had stated that these properties were already taken into account when the percentage density was calculated and councillors from all of the other parties were very concerned that these properties were used for care leavers, those suffering domestic abuse, people in recovery and the like and to publicise where they lived as requested could be very damaging for the individuals concerned.

The Portsmouth News summarised the discussion very well:  Controversial motion to include council-owned HMOs in planning sparks fierce debate

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