This was the rest of the meeting from December 19th. To be honest very little of note happened. There were lots of questions from councillors to other councillors as well as quite a few motions. With majority control of a council I’m afraid the outcomes of these are generally pretty predictable!
The one thing of note that we did was to vote on the 2012-13 council year civic post holders. I am delighted to say that Cllr Alan Armitage will be the next Lord Mayor of Oxford but rather less delighted that the council has chosen to make an HMO Landlord who was recently bound over for the state of one of his Oxford HMOs into next year’s Deputy Lord Mayor. Cllr Dee Sinclair will be Sheriff.
I did finally get to ask my questions about HMOs but the portfolio holder wasn’t present so the leader of the council answered them in his absence. I wasn’t impressed! Here they are, and the answers, with my supplementary comments/questions:
Q1: Given that this council’s “HMO Amenity and Facilities Good Practice Guidelines” make it clear that one shared bathroom which includes a lavatory is sufficient for up to four people in an HMO can Cllr McManners tell me why, with just two more people a second bathroom (also containing a lavatory) is not deemed sufficient by the administration? Can he tell me how many extra lavatories in the last 12 months this council has forced landlords to have installed in 6-person HMOs that already had two lavatory-containing shared bathrooms?
Response: There are no national standards for facilities and amenities in HMOs and each council must produce its own guidelines. Our standards were developed following consultation with landlords in the city as well as consideration of work carried out by other local authorities. Some of the proposed standards were amended following comments from landlords. We recently compared our standards with those used by 14 other similar cities and concluded that the standards being applied in Oxford are consistent with those being applied elsewhere. The use of an HMO is considered to be very different to a family house occupied by a similar number of people which is why additional standards are required. For example, 6 young professionals living in a house are all likely to be getting ready to go to work at the same time in the morning and so both bathrooms are likely to be in constant use. A separate w.c. is therefore an essential amenity for the other occupiers….
There were only two HMOs licensed in the last 12 months where an additional separate toilet was required to be installed. Both of these properties were occupied by 6 people and had 2 bathrooms.
As far as I’m concerned that still doesn’t answer my question. Why is 1 OK for four if 2 are not OK for 6? It makes no sense to me. At least the problem is not as widespread as I’d thought.
Q2: In the last 12 months, how many Oxford homes where an HMO license has been applied (or re-applied) for have passed the inspection without the Council requiring modifications, or additions before the grant of the license? What percentage of total homes inspected in that period does that figure represent?
Response: The records indicate that in the last 12 months only 11 HMOs were inspected that did not require any work before the licence was granted. A total of 454 inspections have been carried out so this represents 2% of the total for the same period.
The answer then goes on in depth about how many landlords have bee prosecuted, entirely missing the point of my question, in that it is about the top end of the market where there are happy tenants and professional landlords. This is a classic attempt to diver attention from the real issue of the unintended damage the HMO licensing scheme is doing to tenants in high-quality house-shares with professional landlords. I responded,
“So does this mean that Oxford City Council is saying the vast majority of HMOs in Oxford are unfit for their tenants or does it mean that the standards are set to high and/or being applied too bluntly?”
There was no answer!
Hi Tony.
Can you please clarify why the Lib Dems seem to have changed their position on mandatory HMO licensing and HMO capping.
Previously they have been in full support of both HMO licensing and HMO capping .
I attach the current link to East Oxford Lib Dem website for a statement in support of HMO licensing . The Lib Dem councillors for St Clements ward, Graham Jones ,assured me ca 8 months ago that he was in full support of HMO capping policies as this would help to create more diverse and balanced communities in East Oxford.
Plse clarify the current Lib Dem position.
> LIB-DEMS CALL FOR ACTION OVER ROGUE LANDLORDS
Liberal Democrat campaigner for St Clement’s Ward, Graham Jones, has backed the call by Dr Steve Goddard, Parliamentary candidate for Oxford East, and the Lib-Dem Oppposition on Oxford City Council, for an early introduction of compulsory licensing for landlords in the city.
Steve has welcomed news that the Government has finally approved the Liberal Democrat scheme to clamp down on dodgy landlords in Oxford.
Steve said: “Everybody knows about the shocking condition that many houses are in. Vulnerable tenants have been exploited and residents have put up with poorly managed houses for too long under Labour. The Liberal Democrats drew up a scheme that would ensure all shared houses needed a license to be let out – we are delighted that this has now finally been approved, after almost two years of delaying whilst Labour considered a watered down voluntary version of the scheme.”
“We were clear this wouldn’t work and kept up the pressure on Labour. We are delighted it has paid off. This is a good day for anyone renting in the private sector in Oxford, but now we have to make sure that Labour tackle the worst landlords quickly and send a clear message that renting out shabby properties and endangering tenants is not acceptable.”
Many thanks
regards
Sietske Boeles
East Oxford resident.
Hello Sietske,
Thank you for taking the time to ask a question. I should be clear that my blog contains my own views and not necessarily “party line”. We LibDems are allowed to think freely and express our opinions (unlike the Labour Group, it would appear!).
That said, I should make it very clear that I do fully support licensing of all HMOs but I am also clear that it should not be done in such a heavy handed way and perhaps should not apply to houses as small as 3. It’s the application of the licensing scheme I have the problem with, not the principle. It seems to be that if tenants are happy and clearly not in a vulnerable situation then the council should just issue the license and butt out. The visiting officers should be able to tell whether people are happy or not. Don’t you think it says something that officers have so far only declared 2% of HMOs fit for purpose. If only 2% of people passed driving tests do you think that would be OK or could it be that the test might be too difficult?
As it is, many landlords are being forced to do works that are not related to safety and absolutely not wanted by tenants. This results in a reduction of quality of accommodation for tenants and usually increased rent too – landlords are businesspeople and will recover costs wherever they can, just as I imagine you or I would if we were in any business. This interference with a set of mostly honest and decent businesses, that provides about 20% of Oxford’s people with housing is, in my, view extremely dangerous. It risks doing huge damage to our City as we lose many people who are economically active and contribute to the viability of its wonderful areas like East Oxford and the the viability of many businesses that provide so much City employment.
I am, of course, all in favour of clamping down on rogue landlords that make a fortune out of people (or worse, housing benefit) in return for forcing them to live in squalid, overcrowded, damp, cold or vermin-infested conditions. It’s fairly obvious that these are in a different league to those I mention above. I am also in favour of clamping down on residents who behave badly but I’d do that to all residents be they owner-occupiers, or tenants. I wouldn’t pick on people just because of their stage of life or the nature of the tenure of their homes.
On the planning permission cap on HMOs, I can’t comment on what Graham has said or not said. You’d need to ask him. I do know that I have never supported artificially manipulating the nature of ratios of tenure of accommodation in Oxford and never will. It is social sorting based on tenure and to my mind is wrong and incredibly illiberal.
Just as a thought experiment, how would you feel if a street was 100% owner-occupied with each house having 3 unrelated people in it with one or more of them being the owner? None of those houses would be classed as HMOs but if they were all rented then they would be and many of those tenants would probably lose their homes as the cap kicks in or their landlords get hounded out of business by the heavy-handed nature of the Labour HMO licensing scheme. Do you see what I mean about social sorting?
I do hope this helps to explain things a little.
Tony
East Oxford Resident
I’ve just invested in a buy-to-let, nice 4 bed semi in quiet part of town. I found 5 quiet and responsible tenants happy to share together on a joint tenancy in just 2 weeks. I’d already come across the HMO licensing scheme … I’d read quite a lot about it, all the OCC web pages, relevant parts of the housing act, it all seemed fairly reasonable. However, alarm bells started ringing when I discovered that most of tenant applicants were refugees from HMOs whose landlords had decided to throw in the towel … because of the HMO licensing … and let their houses to families which is an unregulated market. It seems to me that in the last month a lot of single people must have been made homeless, because finding an affordable home in Oxford has never been easy at the best of times. Simply the extra demand for HMO housing is going to drive rents up – it’s not going to need landlords deciding to recover their costs from their tenants. I decided to invest in a buy-to-let because I’ve been homeless in Oxford myself twice in the past, once with children, and I felt that running an HMO and letting good quality accomodation to people at risk of homelessness would be a way of making a positive contribution. I’m now wondering if I’ve actually let myself in for a business that’s so highly regulated that profit will be hard to make. Sometimes I wonder if someone in the council – officer or elected representative – has clocked that driving landlords from HMO letting to family letting will save the council shedloads of cash … because the City Council is obliged to house homeless families, but not homeless individuals?
Jon I couldn’t agree more!