Coming soon next to you, a multi occupation house with no controls!

READING & DISTRICT LABOUR PARTY MEDIA RELEASE

17 October 2010

Labour anger as Coalition scraps hard-won controls on HMO’s

A decision by Tory Housing Minister Grant Shapps to scrap the need to apply for planning permission to convert a home to a house in multiple occupation (HMO) has angered Labour leaders in Reading, who had been among those pressing the Labour Government to bring the controls in earlier this year.

Housing lead Cllr. Deborah Edwards and Environment lead Cllr. Paul Gittings say: “Many people, in East Reading in particular, live in streets where house after house has been made into an HMO, many of them poorly managed and poorly maintained. Back in 2008 we began calling locally for some way of stopping that spread, of keeping some balance in communities, and of ensuring that any conversions were to a decent standard with proper fire safety precautions and so on.

“We were pleased in April 2009 when the scrutiny panel chaired by LibDem Cllr. Daisy Benson also asked for better information for residents on planning controls on HMO’s, so residents could report breaches to the Council, and for better enforcement of planning policies, and delighted earlier this year when Labour Minister John Healey put a batch of strong new controls in place.

“Now Cllr. Benson puts out a press release as Lead Councillor declaring open house for HMO’s and rejoicing that in future ‘many of Reading's landlords will save time and money by no longer having to fill out planning application forms and paying to submit them to the Council’. And, while the Government is saying that Councils can impose their own controls locally, Reading is still ‘awaiting further advice from central Government’ about how to do this! The Coalition has opened up a great big yawning gap in controls through which Reading’s dodgy landlords will be rushing to establish new HMO’s without consulting or even informing neighbours.”

Jan Gavin, Labour’s candidate for Redlands where the HMO problem is greatest, is launching a petition to press the Council to bring in their own local controls now, without waiting for the Government. She says: “The Council has the power to require landlords to ask for planning permission for conversions, and I am sure that people in Redlands and in other East Reading wards would want them to exercise that power immediately, to plug the gap that Grant Shapps has made. There’s no time to waste: I’m shocked that Daisy Benson, who is after all a Redlands Councillor, did not make that commitment as part of her press release.”

The petition can be signed on-line at:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/39897.html