I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require planning approval for the change of use of housing to multiple occupation; and for connected purposes.

Right hon. and hon. Members will be familiar with the housing landscape in many of our towns and cities, where parts of those towns have become areas where the house in multiple occupation is the predominant form of housing. In many instances those houses are not what one might call traditional HMOs—an original large house subdivided into flats—but are a single house remaining as such, occupied by perhaps half a dozen people paying rent for their individual occupation of an otherwise unconverted house.

This is particularly the case in towns and cities where there are substantial numbers of students. With the expansion of higher education over the past two decades, there are many such towns. The city that I represent, Southampton, is one of those, with an estimated population of 28,000 students in a city of about 220,000 people. It is a city that I represent along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), the former president of the students union. Although university authorities have built increasing numbers of halls of residence and student flats, the majority of students live in such HMOs, under one roof, sharing facilities and, according to a court ruling of 1995 in the Barnes v. Sheffield case, living as a single household.

It is right that a range of types of accommodation should be available to people. HMOs of various types provide important accommodation for young people, single people and people who are seeking shorter-term accommodation. The difficulty that local authorities face in considering how the different types of housing stock are to be deployed is that most types of stock—flats and small or larger houses—and changes of use of building from commercial to residential are all subject to the local planning regime, whereas the conversion of houses from family occupation to multiple occupation is not.

Under present planning legislation, a landlord can simply purchase a family house, possibly with a buy-to-let mortgage, and place five or six tenants in the house immediately. Cumulatively, such HMOs have a substantial impact on the character and amenity of neighbourhoods and, over and above the self-sustaining market that they create, on the inability of families to purchase houses where “studentification” has taken hold, because of the power of purchase that such landlords hold. HMOs raise all the issues of transient tenancies, of large numbers of extra cars parked, and possibly of noise. In short, the area becomes quite different in character.

Despite the fact that HMOs are a specific kind of housing, they are the only kind that is effectively beyond the reach of local planning arrangements. That is because under present planning law, dwelling-houses are regarded as one kind of use, and are so defined in the use class orders that derive from planning legislation. According to the use class orders, with minor but important exceptions a dwelling-house is a dwelling-house is a dwelling-house, regardless of who occupies it. That is understandable in planning terms, as planning law is blind to occupants, and is concerned with land use and its effects.

To an extent, planning law acknowledges that multiple occupancy of a house has land use consequences, but the use class order effectively exempts a change of use within the class for a house with up to seven occupants. A very large HMO, therefore, can come under local planning scrutiny, but the vast bulk of HMOs do not have seven occupants, so the distinction is pretty redundant.

Housing law has moved to recognise the reality of houses in multiple occupation. As right hon. and hon. Members know, the Housing Act 2004 established extensive procedures whereby local authorities can register HMOs and license landlords to run them. The qualifying point for general registration under the Housing Act is five occupants living in a three-storey house, although more widespread registration schemes may be introduced with the agreement of the Secretary of State.

That is a welcome change. As it is implemented, it delivers the prospect of HMOs that are better managed, and the revocation of licences for landlords where such management consistently falls below a level acceptable to local communities. However, it does nothing about HMOs becoming HMOs in the first place. Furthermore, it introduces two different regimes for the definition of HMOs. The Housing Act, for example, specifically includes student houses in its definition of HMOs, because it defines an HMO as a dwelling in which a number of people not related to each other live under one roof. That, in turn, entails a definition of a family and what it means, in housing terms, to be related. Nevertheless, the Act encompasses the reality of HMOs in a way that planning law does not.

What is to be done? The title of my Bill indicates what should be done: the process of effectively changing the use of a family house to that of an HMO, whether that happens through the purchase of a previously occupied house or, as is becoming increasingly common, through the purchase of a new property for buy-to-let purposes, should be regulated through the local development and planning process.

It has been suggested that the way to achieve that aim is to change the use class definition of a dwelling-house and to place use as an HMO outside the definition—the placing of an HMO into the category of use changes that always need planning permission. That is, essentially, what has been done in Northern Ireland. That route is attractive, but the numbers entailed in the revised order in Northern Ireland—more than two unrelated people in a house—suggest that there might be difficulties in defining what relationships trigger what definition, and whether a small HMO can in reality be said to lead to a real effect on land use as a result of the change in the nature of occupation.

In my view, it would be far simpler to bring the definitions in the Housing Act 2004 of numbers licensable, and what constitutes a family, into planning law—in this instance into the use class and schedules in the use class order derived from the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. My Bill would redefine an HMO as requiring planning permission for change of use if more than four people were to occupy the house, and to bring the Housing Act 2004 definition of a family into planning law. In that way, local authorities would have the ability, subject to all the proper safeguards and requirements of the planning process, to determine whether all but the smallest HMOs should receive the go-ahead. That might be backed up by guidance statements about density in local planning framework documents. Local authorities would also be able to cross-reference the houses coming before them for licensing purposes to check whether those houses should go through the planning process, and whether enforcement action should be taken. In truth, this Bill would be a modest amendment to existing planning law; indeed, it would amend existing orders following primary legislation.

The Bill is modest, but it could have a large effect on the weave of the local variety of housing provision in localities in towns and cities, so that the unplanned and often unanticipated swing of entire streets or neighbourhoods towards HMOs would become, over time, a thing of the past. I therefore commend the Bill to the House—but in the uneasy knowledge that it is just possible that it may not complete its passage through the House, even if its progress is agreed today.

I therefore also commend the provisions in the Bill to Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government, who by felicitous coincidence are sitting on the Treasury Bench this afternoon in anticipation of future business. I say to them that spending an afternoon Upstairs in Committee would make a real and substantial difference to the future mix and balance of communities, as I have described today.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Dr. Alan Whitehead, Mr. John Denham, Mr. Andy Reid, Dr. Roberta Blackman-Woods, Alan Simpson, Dr. Phyllis Starkey, Martin Salter, Sandra Gidley and Fiona Mactaggart.

Houses in Multiple Occupation

Dr. Alan Whitehead accordingly presented a Bill to require planning approval for the change of use of housing to multiple occupation; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 19 October, and to be printed [Bill 109].