Mapping HMOs and Student Council Tax Exempt properties - new maps

Broxtowe Borough Council's Jobs & Economy Committee has HMOs on its agenda when it meets this coming Thursday (4 July). Here is a link to the report:

https://democracy.broxtowe.gov.uk/documents/s4101/5.%20HIMO%20report.pdf

I will be including these maps in my response but right now I have been prompted to share my maps with you because of an online discussion currently taking place on Beeston Update about HMOs.

Click on the maps to enlarge:

I regard this map and council tax exemption data to be more important than the HMO Register when it comes to understanding why small HMOs need to be registered as well as large HMOs (small HMOs have 3-4 unrelated tenants living in them and, presently, are not registered).

The map clearly shows that there are few student council tax exempt properties outside Beeston.

You can use the 'search' facility on this blog to find posts by me dating back to 2015.

There is only one registered HMO outside the Beeston area in Broxtowe. It is in Nuthall. I suspect that there are many more properties which should be registered as HMOs.

Nottingham City Transport have kindly been mapping student halls of residence on their bus maps for the past two years. They appear on this map as numbers in boxes, which link to this list alonside the map:

Albion House and part of Broadgate Park are in Broxtowe. The other part of the latter is in Nottingham, albeit one bus stop away or a five minue walk. 

HMOs also have tenants who are workers and pay council tax, so small HMOs can easily go unidentified, especially if the tenants do not register as voters.

Right now, after years of inaction under a Conservative council, the Council is rushing headlong towards a policy for which it has yet to gather the evidence or to use what it already has. That is the data I have obtaining  from the Borough Council to compile my own tables and maps since 2015.

I really welcome the Council's interest but they need to slow down and think about what it is they want to achieve.

Finally, a link to a report from Coventry City Council in January this year which our Council might like to examine:

https://www.coventry.gov.uk/news/article/2760/licensing_properties_consultation

Broxtowe Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) Register and its missing entries.

Today I received an updated copy of Broxtowe's HMO Register and I had been expecting to see a flood of new registrations given, to quote the Council's own website, that 'From 1st October 2018 all HMO's with five or more occupiers forming two or more households regardless of the number of storeys will be subject to HMO licencing. If you own or manage a HMO that meets the criteria for mandatory licencing you must apply for a licence before 1st October 2018'.

I think the above is pretty clear by any measure, yet here we are, over three months later, and just 2 two storey households have been registered! In the absence of an answer to the question how many applications there are outstanding I assume there are none, although I have data from another Council department which suggests there could be a great many unregistered properties with five or more occupiers which should have applied for HMO registration and haven't.

Nottingham city Council say they backdate applications, yet Broxtowe says a ‘renewal cannot be backdated’ despite acknowledging that applications are received without supporting documentation. If landlords/agents know this is Broxtowe’s policy then many will submit incomplete applications! For them it’s a win win situation which involves people has to involve Council employees in more work! As a policy it doesn’t make any sense!

HMO Registration is just one part of a jigsaw Broxtowe Borough Council has, in my opinion, wilfully ignored despite the cost and the extra burden this places upon the wider community.

It is beyond my comprehension as to why there have not been reports to the Council about the matter. Why have so many councillors chosen to ignore the problem?

These are questions which need answers!

I will be disappointed if I cannot do a post on Friday as to income lost because of council tax exemptions and a lax HMO registration p[olicy.

Watch this space. 

A different look at Beeston HMOs.

The following two tables have taken a few days to compile and may well be out of date already as they are based on the copy of Broxtowe Borough Council's Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) Register I received on 4 December 2018.

Anyone can submit a Freedom of Information request to Broxtowe Borough Council if they wish to obtain an up-to-date copy. As I have commented in previous posts I am surprised that HMOs and Council Tax exemption records are not presented to all councillors annually. 

I intend this year to be my last year of summarising the available data, with one final report at the end of this month. In the meantime, examine the data for yourself. I will also make a map version over the next two weeks.

Remember to click on the tables to enlarge.

A slovenly indictment or a measure of pressure? — Broxtowe Borough Council's Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) Register

This HMO table has become a holding operation. I’ve decided to compile a new version based on years in chronological order so that Beeston residents can see how HMO registration has (or not!) progressed. The more I see the more I feel the need to map the obvious - that Broxtowe Borough Council has never taken changing housing needs in Beeston seriously and continues to have no policy/strategy.

Regular readers will know this is something I’ve been going on about for a few years now. 

In the meantime I will be back with a Beeston HMO map, a list of anomalies and some concerns I have. In the meantime you might like to examine my 2018 Beeston HMO Table based on the copy of the Register I received earlier this week after submitting a Freedom of Information request (click on the table to enlarge):

For the record ALL Broxtowe’s HMOs are in Beeston, except for one in Nuthall.

One final point for now. I can’t understand for one moment why HMO registrations are so low when all the evidence suggests the total should be much higher. More about this when I add to this post on Sunday/Monday.