Cambridge City Council will debate restrictions on HMOs at a council meeting after residents shared concerns about parking and the ‘character’ of communities
Cambridge’s HMO hotspots have been revealed in new data as the council considers restrictions after a petition raised locals’ concerns. Donna Ferguson, a campaigner behind the petition, said she knew the “strength of feeling” around HMOs but was still surprised by how quickly they reached their goal.
She said: “We knew there was going to be a huge amount of support for this campaign, but we weren’t sure we would manage to get that many signatures in such a short space of time. It’s been an absolutely huge effort and it’s because of all the volunteers that we have.”
They’ve urged the council to implement Article 4 Directions to require landlords to seek full planning permission for HMOs of six people and less. Currently, those with up to six people can be converted under permitted development rules.
The petition also calls for the council to set a 10 per cent HMO threshold within 100m to “prevent harmful over-concentration”. Donna, who is also chair of Guest Road Area Residents’ Association (GRARA) in Petersfield, said HMOs make up a third of properties in their local area.
She said: “It’s one of the smallest parking zones in Cambridge and we have a very large number of HMOs. What happens is a resident will go somewhere with their car, come back, and there’s absolutely no space for residents to park.
“They’ll end up parking on a single-yellow line and get a ticket – pretty much every resident who lives here has had a ticket for parking near their home because there’s no space to park.”
Donna compiled data from the council and university and student accommodation registers to create a heatmap of where HMOs are most concentrated. She found that there are “at least” 1,481 HMOs in Cambridge – 935 licensed by the council and 532 managed by University of Cambridge colleges, Anglia Ruskin University or other registered student accommodation providers.
Donna said: “I hope that when people can see on a map where the different HMOs are it will help inform the council about where the Article 4 Directions need to be in place.” HMOs must be registered with the council if they house five or more people – but this doesn’t include smaller HMOs.
She said she hopes the map will help the council understand that “right across the city, HMOs are clustering – and there’s already a large number of HMOs you can’t see on this map”.
She added that “as a general rule of thumb” if the HMO can be entered “directly from a public street” it’s included in the dataset – so if students need to go through a porter’s lounge or college-managed entry barrier, it’s excluded.
Donna’s report found 468 HMOs sitting in clusters of three to six within 50 metres of each other, and a further 289 in “hyper-dense clusters” of seven or more within 50 metres. A single address on St John’s Road on the edge of Jesus Green has 31 HMOs within 50 metres – the same length as an Olympic swimming pool.
She said: “There’s some parts of Cambridge where HMOs are very densely concentrated – that kind of changes the character of the neighbourhood and the community. Before, it was perhaps long-standing members of a community.”
Market has the largest concentration of HMOs, with a total of 320, and 210 that are within 50m of another five or more HMOs. Petersfield and Romsey wards are also densely populated with HMOs, with 151 and 154 in total respectively – 59 and 37 of which are within 50m of another five or more HMOs. The street with the most HMOs was Mill Road, with 52.
Cambridge consistently ranks as one of the most expensive places to live in the UK and with a student population of roughly 35,000 there is no shortage of demand for affordable housing.
Donna said: “HMOs are a crucial part of the housing mix – people know that students need to live in Cambridge and there needs to be low-cost housing. But HMOs can cause problems in neighbourhoods – they can put pressure on parking, pressure on bins and lead to issues around noise and antisocial behaviour the way any property full of adults can.”
She said other university cities like Oxford and Bristol have already introduced restrictions on HMOs, leaving Cambridge as an outlier. She said: “If the council adopts both those measures then it will have a way of regulating HMOs and empowering residents to have a say – when would that ever be a bad thing?”
Cambridge City Council will debate whether to introduce Article 4 Directions and a maximum threshold on HMOs at Thursday’s council meeting. To view the full dataset and heatmap visit: https://cambridgehmos.netlify.app/.
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