ROOF Blog

Thousands of tenants, students and buy-to-let investors will be hit by new laws forcing landlords to apply for planning permission if they want to rent a property to three or more people. Landlord associations have criticised the Government’s proposals, which will bring down from six to three the number of unrelated people who can rent a property together before planning permission is needed from local authorities. The legislation will affect only properties that register for a ‘change of use’ (for example, converting a family home into flats), and will not affect pre-existing houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) that are rented out to three or more tenants. There are more than 400,000 registered HMOs, and these will fall within the new legislation only if their landlords change the tenancy arrangements.

Conservative councils are less likely to grant planning permission for new homes than other local authorities, according to research by McGrigors, the commercial law firm.

The gap is not large – 63 per cent of applications were approved by Tory-controlled councils compared with 69 per cent in authorities under Labour, Liberal or no overall control.

But given that the Conservatives control half of all councils with planning permission powers and are likely to make further gains in elections in May, the outlook could well be an even more severe housing shortage in the long-term, the law firm said.

On top of that, Conservative control is most heavily concentrated in the south-east where housing shortages are most acute.

Six of the 10 local planning authorities with the lowest approval rates, all below 45 per cent, were run by the Conservatives. They were Castle Point, Wycombe, Chiltern, Wokingham and Reigate and Banstead in the south east, and the Forest of Dean.

Peter Boggis, 78, has spent tens of thousands of pounds building earth barriers to protect his home at Easton Barriers, near Southwold, Suffolk, and those of his neighbours which are threatened by erosion to the cliffs on which they stand. But Natural England, the Government conservation agency, wants the fossil-rich cliffs to wear away, exposing strata of soil and rock for study. Mr Boggis had carried out the work carried out on the sea defences without planning permission, and the Court of Appeal said in its judgement that the only lawful course now open to Mr Boggis was to apply for permission and go through the correct planning process. Mr Boggis, whose house, The Warren, is 302ft from the cliff edge, says his defences have so far saved more than eight acres of land and four properties ‘at no cost to the nation’ and that his efforts would, if anything, slow down the expected loss of habitat on the wildlife site.