Last night, Broxtowe Borough Council's Jobs and Economy Committee made the decision to work towards the introduction of a Article 4 (planning) Direction regulating the number of HMOs in all of Beeston Central ward and and parts of the other three Beeston wards (see my Beeston council tax exemptions map below). Click on map to enlarge).
For Beeston Central ward's two Labour councillors, Lynda and Pat Lally, this was a moment they had been working towards for a good few years and Lynda's concern about the fact that it was going to take a year to do was understandable because she and her husband Pat were only too fully aware of the landlord tsunami they were about to unleash on Beeston. Assuming the Government grants the Article 4 Direction, as from 27 February 2021 ALL HMOs in the mapped area will be regulated and subject to planning permission and in some parts of Beeston no more will be allowed — hence the landlord tsunami as they rush to beat the deadline.
Lynda Lally thanked Beeston Civic Society for their support over the years and it is under their banner that I have done my mapping and report writing. The maps below are maps I have produced for the Civic Society although the opinions expressed are my own.
The Borough's Planning Officer made the point that even though the Jobs and Economy Committee was about to make a momentous decision, there was no guarantee that they would be successful — the Government could decide to reject the Article 4 Direction application because there was evidence which suggested there would be a surplus of student accommodation across Greater Nottingham in four years time as more student accommodation blocks are built. Anyone who lived through Lenton's takeover by private landlords will tell you that this was a story told more than once in Dunkirk and Lenton as the (Labour) City Council delayed and delayed the introduction of an Article 4 Direction. When they did it was too late!
As another councillor pointed out, it is a pity that the focus is on students when there are a good many non-student HMOs in Beeston. As I have repeatedly said in this blog since February 2015, when I produced and posted my first maps and tables, the data for non-student households doesn't exist. The nearest you can get to tracking them is via the electoral roll. However many overseas nationals, despite having a vote in local elections, choose not to register now that voter registration is voluntary.
The fact that my registered HMO maps are able to show non-student HMOs is because I cross-reference student council tax exemption postcodes with postcodes listed in Broxtowe's HMO Register against addresses. I know how the Lynda and Pat feel, given the former Conservative led Borough Council showed no interest in what was a problem and this was echoed by the Borough's Planning Office the last time I heard him speak. Last night he was whistling a slightly different tune but his words leave me suspecting his commitment to the task the Jobs and Economy Committee set him last night. We shall see.
Two of the Conservatives on the Committee abstained, one voted against. I'm afraid I don't know their names but the one who spoke sounded like a spokesman for those landlords who will actively oppose the Article 4 Direction regulation HMOs in Beeston whilst buying up all the properties they can. I suspect the next 12 months will see a good few families leaving Beeston as they take advantage in the house price surge which is hitting Beeston already — my own house has, according to Zoopla, has added over £100,000 to its value since we bought it 5 years ago. Coincidence or what but we are about to get a 6 bed HMO at the entrance to the cut-de-sac on which we live. Once an Article 4 Direction is in place, house prices will fall dramatically, simply because the landlord feeding frenzy will be over. Family homeowners know this. 2020 is going to be the year to sell in Beeston if you want to get a (very) good price.
How do I know all this? Quite simply, I lived in Lenton for 35 years and sold after Nottingham City Council introduced, very belatedly, introduced its own Article 4 Direction regulating all HMOs — which is why I spent the past five years describing the private landlord take over of Beeston as 'Lentonisation' (read my note below).
For now, what happens will be in the capable hands of Liberal Democrat Councillor Tim Hallam, the Jobs and Economy Committee Chair, who was, effectively, given delegated power to oversee the process of ensuring that an Article 4 (HMO) Direction order covering much of Beeston gets Government approval and is introduced a year from now. I am in no doubt that he has a tough fight on his hands. I wish him well.
He also made the point (which I have heard him make before) that Stapleford could well do with a few more students.
For now, here are the 4 pages which made up my note to the Jobs and Economy Committee last night with the support of Beeston & District Civic Society:
Evidence (like the signs above over shops on Beeston High Road) and experience tell me that private landlords are in the process of doing to Beeston what they did to Lenton and it all begins with students wanting to live away from the campus, preferably with just a few friends, in a house. An innocent enough ambition in itself, but it is one which takes an established mixed/balanced community and turns it into a ghetto.
It was the mid-1980s when Thatcher made it easy
for universities like Nottingham and Trent to expand rapidly and this continues apace. Back then residents like myself saw the consequences and argued that all student accommodation in the community should be registered and the number of student properties in any road limited to 25%. This level still results in 50% or more of the residents being students and contributing to the destruction of the community so many want to be part of. Sad to say few listened and the City Council and the two city universities ignored us. We won a few fights along the way, but it was others, who took a harder line when it came to students, who finally won the day resulting in Nottingham City Council introducing rules in 2013 requiring any shared property with three or more tenants/occupants to be registered as a house in multi-occupation (HMO) and banning more HMOs in many parts of the city, including Lenton and Radford (Broxtowe Borough Council presently sets the HMO test at six sharing a house, but appears to have no enforcement plan).
Talk to students and their representatives and they, for the most part, understand this. Beeston can prevent its "Lentonisation' if it chooses to.
This is not a new claim or observation by me and I am not the first to make it. What I probably do have is more experience and understanding of the challenges Beeston faces, which left unchecked will see the town losing many of its shops, many being turned into student accommodation. It happened in Lenton, Radford and Hyson Green in the city and can happen here.
In Lenton, where I was a community activist for the best part of thirty-five years, we saw road after road bought up by private landlords who happily paid more for a house than any owner-occupier ever would or could. Why? Because they counted the number of rooms they could turn into bedrooms and this almost always including one, if not two, of the ground floor living rooms. This way they could easily fit 4, 5, 6, even more students into the house.
My 2015 map when I am able to update it will show the onward march of council tax exempt properties in Beeston. Of this fact I am sure. The signs on the streets I walk along tell me this.
I use the word 'student', although the official term which is important here is 'full-time education'. I think the latter is a nicety. Students do not have to pay council tax on the property/room they rent because properties occupied exclusively by those in 'full-time education' do not have to pay council tax.
This exemption currently reduces the council tax collected in Broxtowe by £950,000. This figure was provided by the Borough Council to a Beeston councillor. In the side column you will find a page devoted to this topic which I compiled last year based on the information available at the time. Last year 84% of Broxtowe's council tax exempt properties were in Beeston. I am sure the percentage is now higher and I am currently waiting for this information to be provided, but at 84%, the cost, you can argue to Beeston is £798,000!
When landlords set the rents they charge students the fact that the student occupant does not have to pay council tax becomes part of the calculation used to set the rent. This way the landlord can charge a slightly higher rent and increase his/her profits in the process.
Once Beeston had a few established estate agents, now they are everywhere and they are like the private landlords they feed on. The lucky make fat profits and can pay higher rents and business rates. Established businesses are forced to close because rents go up and business rates rise as well. And it is the demise of one such local business which prompts this post. The loss of a café may seem of itself of no importance to anyone bar the staff who lose their jobs and the regular customers who see it as an extension of their home — for that is what a good café can become.
I will leave you with the evidence and I will not be alone in mourning its passing. The question is 'Do you?'
