Marshalls And Rise Park Conservative Candidate Tackles HMOs in Romford.

Bailey Nash-Gardner the Conservative candidate for Marshalls and Rise Park today writes in the Havering Daily:

The explosion of House of Multiple Occupancy (HMO) applications across Havering is going to become a defining issue of for me locally, that’s if you think it hasn’t already. What was once a borough of settled communities and family homes is rapidly becoming a patchwork of transient lets, overcrowded properties, and disappearing neighbourhood identity.

In my ward alone, Marshalls and Rise Park, I am battling several applications and unlicensed HMOs with my colleagues, Nisha Patel and Robert Benham along with local residents.But this has not happened overnight. And more importantly, it’s not an issue without precedent or a potential solution – which I am glad to see that Councillors from all parties have agreed to explore.

Let’s look at recent numbers. In 2020, 66 HMO applications were submitted in Havering. By 2021 that number had jumped to 86, which is a 30% increase in just a year. Whilst 2022 saw a modest drop to 71, the cumulative trend is clear: landlords and developers are aggressively pursuing HMO conversions across the borough, often at the expense of community stability. These aren’t isolated pockets; it is very much a borough-wide saturation.

Now, we have looked at reducing HMOs in the borough before, and ac on was taken. Back in 2016, the then Conservative-led administration had the foresight to introduce two Article 4 Directions that introduced requirements for planning permission for most small HMOs.

The first applied to central wards such as the then ‘Brooklands’ and ‘Romford Town (as they were then known)’; the second covered the rest of the borough but only for flats, terraces, and semis. Detached homes were left exempt in the outer areas, creating a loophole that developers have since exploited with zeal.

The 2016 Article 4 measures were a good start, but they haven’t kept up with the scale or shape of the problem. The ward boundaries used in 2015 when proposals were first drawn up are now outdated, enforcement is inconsistent (or non-existent as residents in Dorset Avenue are experiencing), and applications continue to pour in, including in parts of the borough never intended to absorb such high-density conversions. Other local councils across the country have brought in borough-wide Article 4 directions and have shown it to be effective.

Nottingham City Council has applied Article 4 across the whole of Nottingham City, ensuring any conversion to an HMO, regardless of housing type, requires planning permission. Moreover, planning permission is seen as ‘highly unlikely’ to be granted under current policies.

Havering can learn from these examples, and it must. That’s why I’m glad to see that all

parties accepted, on Wednesday, that we must take action to strengthen our Article 4 Directions further – much further.

Havering needs to have a borough-wide direction to Include all housing types, even detached homes; which will be seen as prime targets due to current policy gaps to Update the present Article 4 Direction 1 boundaries to align with the 2022 Ward Maps to have a more robust enforcement strategy to ensure compliance and protect our borough’s character.

This is purely about restoring balance to our communities. HMOs have their place in a modern housing system, but unmanaged growth leads to overcrowded roads, overflowing bins left in gardens and on the streets, overstretched public services where there are already so many pressures, and communities that feel less like communities and more like transient neighbourhoods.

Residents are not imagining these impacts; they’re living with them. Every poorly converted home and every front garden paved over for extra cars, is a reminder that the current system isn’t working.Councillor Nisha Patel presented a motion on Wednesday evening which would have done the above but in a faster time frame than the motion that was adjusted (albeit 6 months) and gave Councillors a clear choice: follow the lead of cities like Nottingham or allow speculation to keep outpacing regulation. We cannot keep kicking this issue down the road. The data tells us the pressure is real. The policies of 2016 were only the beginning. It is now the time for Havering Council to finish what was started under the Conservati ve-led administration.

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