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Government to outlaw small rooms and increase mandatory HMO licensing

November 9, 2015 by Tessa J Shepperson

Council OfficesWe knew it was on its way and here it is – the preliminary ‘technical discussion document‘ before a bill to bring in yet more regulation in the PRS in England.

After such a long period of stability, landlords have really been hammered over the past 12 months. And still it keeps coming.

To be fair though most of the measures in this bill are probably justified. What are we looking at?

More mandatory licensing

The paper starts by declaring that government wants to crack down on rogue landlords and make it easier for Local Authorities to raise standards in the smaller HMOs.

This means extending mandatory licensing from three to two story HMOs and even maybe one story HMOs. As the paper points out, this would bring into scope the dreaded ‘beds in sheds’ properties which – being sheds – are invariably one story only.

Then there are poorly converted blocks of flats – should they too be brought into scope too? The paper asks for your views.

The government however, feel that as long leases for flats generally prohibit multiple occupation and nuisance, that should be enough.

Minimum room sizes

The next section proposes a minimum room size for bedrooms. At present, there is no minimum standard and the government are concerned that valuable Local Authority resources are being wasted by legal challenges to decisions relating to small rooms.

It looks as if the minimum is going to be set at 6.5 sq m which is the Local Housing minimum standard from s326 of the Housing Act 1985.

I have just measured that out on the sitting room carpet, and it looks as if it would cut out the minuscule rooms we have seen in ‘shock horror’ articles in the press recently. So a good thing.

Although, as people will no doubt point out – if there is nothing else available, better a shoe box indoors than a park bench outdoors. Particularly in winter.

But that is more a problem of supply and demand and cannot justify permitting landlords to rent out microscopic rabbit hutches with impunity.

Letting to family members

There is currently an exemption to mandatory licensing if the let is to the landlord’s family.

However, it seems that this has been abused (what a surprise!) and resources have been wasted in establishing identities – to see if occupiers really are family members or not.

It is therefore proposed to remove the exemption.

Streamlining the process

The final section relates to streamlining the process for applying for a license and the paper asks respondents to let them know whether they consider all the questions on the forms are really relevant.

There are also proposals to only require a landlord to provide information once if they are making multiple applications.

This will no doubt make it easier for Local Authorities to process the greatly increased number of applications brought in by this legislation, at lower cost.

Although hopefully when the provisions of the Housing and Planning Bill come into force, and Local Authorities are allowed to hang to enforcement fees and fines, things may be a bit easier for them financially.

If you hold strong views on any of this

The Consultation paper is here and you have until 18 December to put in your response.

Photo kindly provided by Sandra Savage-Fisher of QuaLETy

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About Tessa J Shepperson

Tessa is a specialist landlord & tenant lawyer and the creator of this site! She is a director of Landlord Law Services which runs Landlord Law and Easy Law Training.

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Comments

  1. Colin Lunt says

    November 9, 2015 at 10:02 AM

    It was always an anomaly that a three story HMO had to be licensed but say a two story HMO with a larger number of rooms did not. The principle of the regs is that in a unit of mixed households there should be a higher level of safety due to the varying methods of living. The use of the household for a family of two parents & three children will be significantly different the that of five adults either on joint or individual contracts.

    I have a problem with the concept of “rogue landlord” and that being a focus of control. Is a rouge someone who falls foul of the law once (by lack of knowledge or otherwise), at a serious level or the landlord who for a long time sails close to the wind is warned several times but whose tenants move on and it is not considered reasonable to prosecute because each breach is at the margins?

    That being said it does seem that this government is adopting a drip-drip approach, often adding new clauses to a Bill at the end of debate that are poorly drafted.

  2. Ian says

    November 9, 2015 at 6:01 PM

    I think for once the government is being sensible!

    Apart from the issue of small rooms, lots of rooms are just less than 6.5 sq m, but may still be OK if there is storage elsewhere for the tenant to use etc. So they do need to be considered on a case by case bases.

  3. Rent Rebel says

    November 9, 2015 at 6:30 PM

    Rogue landlords (as Ben has long said) is a stupidly vague and pointless turn of phrase.

    “Criminal landlord” is a far better term to use.

    If you are contravening housing law then you are a criminal landlord, as i see it; whether you have been prosecuted (so far) or not. If your negligence, laziness, ignorance or incompetence puts tenants’ lives in danger then you are also a menace to society.

  4. Ben Reeve Lewis says

    November 10, 2015 at 9:19 AM

    @Colin and Reb yes I have said from the get go that the term was unhelpful to enforcement types. Admittedly the term has ended up becoming an easily adoptable handle that I use myself but it is still problematic.

    Whilst at Lewisham we struggled for ages to create a matrix which would justify a name on a list if challenged. We looked at the number of properties they owned or ran, previous enforcement action, the amount of tenant’s affected etc but no matter what way we tried to do it people we knew as villains didnt fit.

    We had one landlord digging out a basement without planning permission, aggressive to neighbours. Police contacted us in exasperation after they were called 32 times in 28 days including an armed response unit but he only had the one property and 11 tenants living in rooms so didnt fit the matrix, even though he was causing chaos in the street………….we stuck him on the list anyway

  5. Sam says

    November 11, 2015 at 12:10 PM

    And all this from the ‘supposedly’ pro landlord party?! Also it’s staggering when they Tory manifesto totally omitted the private rented sector (if memory serves)

  6. Romain says

    November 11, 2015 at 3:45 PM

    Banning small rooms is utterly counterproductive.

  7. beelbeebub says

    November 12, 2015 at 10:16 PM

    The current HMO regulations are very vague and the interpretation is difficult.
    .
    We operate a number of properties that are large Victorian houses converted to flats. Each flat was self contained, shared no facilities and had it’s own external entrance. In fact they would be typical of the sorts of owner occupied flats that commonly result from large houses being subdivided.
    .
    The tenant’s were all a single household, single tenancy per flat, with no “flat shares”.
    .
    Yet we still fell into the definition of “HMO” by virtue of the fact that the building was over 3 stories (although no individual flat was more than 2) and (due to the conversion having been undertaken in the 1950’s) did not comply with the 1992 building regs. I did point out that under the existing definition it could be argued that a terraced house with either a basement or loft conversion could be considered a HMO if the landlord owned more than one in a street.
    .
    Despite having started enquiries about whether or not we required licencing in 2008 it was only last year we were finally told that the local council had decided that we did not require licencing.
    .
    I now have to start the process again.
    .#if the government want to require landlords to be licenced, they should just get on with it and come up with a clear scheme, maybe based on number of tenancies (1 or less, minimal registration, 1-5 light touch etc)

  8. Robert Phoenix says

    December 2, 2015 at 2:41 PM

    Whilst the HMO rules appear caring on the surface, I can only see the possibility of overwhelming damage to tenants. Against a small number of tenants possibly gaining improvements to their properties there will be a net reduction of available affordable lets, this is a simple market reality. Where will the displaced tenants go? At best, they will have to pay more for properties at a higher minimum level of “quality”. Possibly this may result in debt problems. And at worst they may end up homeless.

    Saying that banning small rooms will help is like saying that demolishing a Favela in Brazil will solve the housing problem there. Of course we should make things better, but this cannot be done by blocking off part of the market, the market must be rebalanced by supplying what is missing. If there were a new investment programme to supply sufficient good quality social housing then the only people still renting privately would be those who perceived a quality advantage in what was on offer at the market price.

    In a democracy, let us not lecture the public on what is good for them. Let us simply ensure they have a choice and let them decide. This is done by increasing, not decreasing, the range of options on offer.

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