There are around a dozen streets in Redlands, in particular the streets off Erleigh Rd, where the number of people living in them has reached a critical level.
Much of the housing in these streets is owned by private landlords who typically extend them into the roofspace, the back garden and in several cases, into the basement. They are then rented to students or immigrant workers.
Higher housing density is not a bad thing in itself, but where parking and waste management runs out of the space required, or where it causes increases in crime or anti-social behaviour, then it needs to be managed. We have fairly good data that this is happening in Redlands.
The Labour Government has been encouraging higher housing densities in town centres, believing this to be a way of dealing with the lack of affordable housing in the UK. So they are taking steps to make permitted development (planning law) more lax...allowing landlords to build still bigger extensions.
They have also limited what can be done on HMO ("Houses in Multiple Occupation") licensing, requiring huge volumes of data to increase the scope of licensing schemes. Combine this with the move to increase the number of people going to University, with the pressure on Universities to be more commercial (student accomodation provided by Universities is a cost, rather than a money-maker), and we have a situation of increasing pressure on housing, without the tools to manage it.
Lib Dems in other towns have called for zones which are subject to special controls, limiting the number of HMOs in particular areas. These have been struck down by the courts. Nevertheless we are hoping that national moves to make HMOs a separate planning category, which includes student accomodation,
will mean that the planning system can be used to effectively manage the issue.
Meanwhile, we will be making sure the Council applies the planning rules it can use, that it licenses the HMOs it can license, and that the University and Council work together, to make sure that there is enough quality accomodation in the town without increasing pressure on already crowded streets. I have already met with senior officers in planning and licensing to move this forward.
We will also be working through the Neighbourhood Action Groups (NAGs) to find ways to deal with the issues of parking, waste management and anti-social behaviour that result from high density housing, and make the area more pleasant to live in.
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