York’s licencing regime covers all HMOs with 3+ tenants.  The rules prescribe room sizes, kitchen amenities, fire safety etc.  We can help you ensure compliance, especially to safeguard the number of rentable bedrooms – and hence profitability.   We have put together the below guide to help you understand HMO regulations.  The guide covers Planning and Licensing areas, each overseen by a specific department within the York Council.

An HMO planning permission allows a particular property to be rented out to 3+ occupants from more than one household, who share facilities such as kitchen, bathroom(s) etc. These permissions are in place to avoid high concentration of HMOs in any given area. HMO permissions are usually necessary for Landlords to obtain a new mortgage. These will also make it easier to sell the HMO at a higher valuation. There are three main cases when the Landlord, directly or by using a specialist agent, will have to submit a planning application to the Council’s Planning department: First, conversion of a residential family dwelling (use class C3) to a House in Multiple Occupation (use class C4 HMO, 3-6 occupants) or Large HMO (Sui Generis, 7+ occupants). In this case a full planning application must be submitted. The primary guiding principles for Planning department on whether to approve or reject the application are the following: (A) To avoid high concentration of HMOs in a given area, the Council will first check if the proposed conversion will breach the following thresholds: Within 100m of the property, no more than 10% are known HMOs At the neighbourhood level, no more that 20% are known HMOs Should the addition of one HMO breach either or both of these levels, the application is highly likely to see rejection. It is often prudent to seek pre-application advice from Planning department. This process takes ~3 weeks but will show relevant HMO levels and hence the likelihood of application success. Velorum Property’s proprietary knowledge of York can also give you a steer as to the likelihood of HMO conversion (B) Another major consideration is availability of off-street parking. This ensures that additional HMO residents will not put excessive strain on public parking. Often the house will need to have 1 car space per 2 residents, but this depends on the city area. Also, the requirements can be tighter where parking is already restricted, such as cul-de-sacs and narrow roads (C) Compliance with points A and B is mandatory in most cases. However, adequate floor plans, refuse arrangements, bicycle storage, and the overall application professionalism will also be considered prior to allowing HMO conversion Second, the simpler route of seeking a Certificate of Lawful Use (“CLU”) for existing HMOs. This will require a proof of tenancy agreements covering the period of the past ten years without breaks. This route is simpler than a full planning application. Nonetheless, it will still take time to prepare the application, and then approximately two months for the Council to review it and issue CLU. If you are not able to locate some old tenancy agreements but are confident that your property has been consistently rented out to 3-6 unrelated occupants, get in touch and we can advise on other supporting documents that can lead to CLU application success Please note that if the property has been rented out as an HMO but has 7+ tenants, it will require a full planning application, rather than the simpler CLU process Third, certain building works and property alterations that you may want to carry out. In houses that are not HMOs, these would often fall within permitted development rights and not require planning permission. However, “Article 4 Direction” removed permitted development rights for certain alterations. Plus, if structural changes are proposed, then Planning would need to sign off anyway, along with the team from Building Control department

Very often HMO planning permission (conversion approval and CLU, issued by Planning department) is confused with HMO licence from Healthy & Sustainable Homes department. For instance, if you are seeking a mortgage, the bank’s solicitors may ask for “HMO licence” when in fact they require proof that the property is a legal HMO in the eye of the Planning department. Or you may receive HMO permission from Planning and start renting it out just to find out that you are in breach of the licencing regime. It is very important to separate and understand the two, as failure to comply with the latter may result in prosecution and fines of up to £30,000. An HMO licence confirms that the property meets the mandatory housing standards. Healthy & Sustainable Homes department validates minimum room sizes and fire safety compliance, such as smoke/fire/monoxide alarms, emergency lights for larger HMOs, fire doors etc. Until Apr-2023 only HMOs with 5 or more unrelated occupants were subject to the “Mandatory” HMO Licensing. From year 2023 however, HMOs with 3-4 occupants sharing common facilities in eight wards are now subject to “Additional” HMO Licensing. This means that practically all of York’s HMOs now fall within the realms of HMO Licencing and are subject to the same rules. The biggest consequence of this rule is that it is illegal to rent out a bedroom under 6.51 sqm as a single bed accommodation. Likewise, the size of kitchen and lounge also limits the number of Tenants at the house. The standards are set in law and the Council has no leeway to offer discretionary exceptions.