Greenwich Council has strengthened its rules on whether HMOs should be approved, two weeks before changes to the law mean officers could be dealing with them behind closed doors rather than elected councillors meeting in public.

The tightened rules are due to be included in the borough’s new Local Plan, which will need to be examined by a planning inspector next year before it can come into force.

But Tom Creswell, the Labour cabinet member for planning, has signed off a “guidance note” that says the rules should be considered now when HMOs come before officers and councillors.

A wave of family homes have been converted into bedsits – or homes of multiple occupation – in recent years thanks to lax national and local planning rules.

In Greenwich, all HMOs need to be licensed under a separate set of rules, but some neighbours say they have become magnets for crime and antisocial behaviour. The issue became a hot topic at the council election in May, particularly in Plumstead and Shooters Hill, where Labour lost seats to the Greens, and it has remained controversial since then.

Council data shows that 44 per cent of all HMO approvals in the five years to March were in the Plumstead & Glyndon and Plumstead Common wards.

Greenwich’s new rules bar HMOs in buildings of less than 130 square metres. They also attempt to stop concentrations of HMOs in streets and blocks of flats, banning them where three or more of the nearest ten properties are also HMOs. They also need to be well-managed and in areas with good public transport.

Under default rules set across England by David Cameron’s coalition government in 2010, developers do not have to apply for permission for HMOs of six or fewer residents as they are deemed “permitted development”. 

Councils can set their own rules opting out from this, but Greenwich’s current Local Plan, which came into force in 2014, did not mention HMOs at all – leading to the borough becoming a target for landlords.

In 2018, Greenwich introduced a direction that meant all HMO developments had to apply for planning permission, which in practice has meant they go before councillors to be heard in public.  But the lack of rules in the current Local Plan meant officers and councillors were often powerless to refuse them. 

The guidance note is intended as a stopgap before the new Local Plan comes into force.  It adds that many responses to a recent consultation said the policy should be “more restrictive rather than less restrictive”.

Stock image of an HMO with wheelie bins outside
Nationally, smaller HMOs do not need planning permission, but they do in Greenwich. Image: The Greenwich Wire

But it also comes shortly before changes to national planning rules, which come in on October 31, mean far fewer decisions on smaller developments will be made by councillors. This makes it more likely that HMOs will be decided by officers rather than by councillors, although they will still not be automatically permitted.

However, applications can still be referred to committees if they “raise a significant economic, social or environmental issue for the local area” – although it is unclear how this will work in practice as the new national rules do not specifically mention HMOs.

Creswell told The Greenwich Wire: “These new measures show that we’re serious about cracking down on rogue HMO landlords that put profit over people. 

“There’s a housing crisis, and we need a balanced mix of flexible, good quality, housing – without compromising on the standards that tenants and neighbourhoods expect. That means protecting family-sized homes whilst also providing affordable rental properties for residents such as house shares.

 “Our new rules strike this balance by tackling HMO overconcentration whilst also protecting tenants from exploitation by landlords. 

“If these rules had been in place over the last five years, 84 per cent of HMO planning applications would’ve been rejected based on our measures on internal floorspace alone, which shows we’ve brought in rules with real teeth.

“Where people refuse to play by the rules, we’ve strengthened our approach even further with new enforcement powers which could see landlords without an HMO licence hit with a £40,000 fine.”

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