Yesterday it was a full council meeting and I spoke about government proposals to take away the power of local councils when it comes to deciding the fate of planning applications for Houses of Multiple Occupancy. Below is a copy of the speech:

The Governments proposal to remove local councils powers to refuse HMO’S is a disgrace.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps visited Leeds this year during the General Election campaign, when he was Shadow Housing Minister and said; “that he would not change the impact of the governments legislation which enables local councils to refuse more applications for HMO’S”.

He has made a spectacular u-turn on what he said. We’re being left back at square one after years of campaigning by local councils,residents and community groups. Another broken promise to go with that on Tuition Fee’s mentioned earlier today.

My ward Hyde Park has one of the highest proportions of HMO’s in the City and is a very densely populated area.

More HMO’s bring with them a range of other problems such as increased crime rates, noise, anti-social behaviour and environmental issues.

This also makes it very difficult to foster a community spirit and cohesion caused by a large transient population.

At a time when we as a Council are trying to improve Hyde Park and Headingley wards and make them a better place to live, it would be extremely disappointing and detrimental to our efforts if the governments actions prevented us from protecting the areas from further encroachment from HMO’s at the expense of desperately needed family housing for our local residents.

Who is going to live in these properties? More and more students are moving into custom built flats supplied by Unipol etc. There are more and more voids, empty and boarded up houses appearing in our area which proves that there is an over supply of existing HMO’s in my ward.

Last year the Labour government consulted on the issue of HMO’s and 92% of respondents supported changes in planning legislation which gave local council’s the powers to refuse permission for new HMO’s.

But now we are about to lose these powers again as the new coalition government have announced that they will bring in these new and different laws so that a change of use from a family home will become permitted development which means that planning permission will not be needed at all.

Ten years of local campaigning by local communities and extensive consultation dismissed at a stroke.

What happened to the Big Society ? Taking powers from Whitehall Mandarins and giving power back to local people and councils.

“Local people Know there area better than any Civil Servant in Whitehall”.

Who said that during the general election campaign ? David Cameron !

As I said before yet another broken promise. I ask that council support the Labour amendment to this white paper and hopefully the government may be persuaded to look again at their policy on this important issue for our local communities here in Leeds.

It would help if the Conservative group and other groups on council voted to support the amended white paper and send a clear message to the Coalition government that all the political parties in Leeds are listening to the people who will be badly affected by this new policy.

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