Nuneaton and Bedworth council admit they 'don't know' how many HMOs there are

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Money has now been set aside to look at introducing a licensing scheme



Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council wants to get all Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs) across the borough licenced as well as listed. The council has admitted that it does not know how many HMOs there are in the two towns.

This is because not all have to be registered but Town Hall leader, councillor Steve Hey announced that the council wants to bring in a new system.

Mandatory licensing is required for all properties with five or more tenants but councils can ask for licences for smaller HMOS, between three and four people. Cllr Hey said that other councils do have a registering system in place and it is something that they want to do locally.

In the budget, £40,000 has been set aside to employ someone to 'get the work off the ground'.

Explaining the spend at the annual budget setting meeting, Cllr Hey said: "There was a very interesting meting of the OSP (Overview and Scrutiny Panel about HMOs, it is a very, very emotive subject.

"Lots of people think they are full of asylum seekers, which is not the case, if we didn't have HMOs, we would have a housing crisis in this borough because a lot people who are living in HMOs are on their first steps to employment.

"The problem is we don't know where all of the HMOs are, there is a myth going round that we know where they all are, but we don't because HMOs below a certain level don't have to apply for a licence, so how do we know where they are?

"What we learnt about HMOs (at the OSP meeting), is that some boroughs have introduced a scheme where all HMOs have to be registered, whatever size they are.

"I hadn't heard that before, so we have decided to get somebody in and get the licensing system of HMOs off the ground because if we do it properly and what we heard is right, actually the income from that will pay for this, so we won't have to fund it from the general fund."

There were further comments made that some HMO landlords have said that they would welcome the new register system.

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/local-news/nuneaton-bedworth-council-admit-dont-33494411