HMO Licensing Oxford: Part 1 – Progress & Impact

In the first of this three part series, we take a look at the progress and impact of Oxford City Council’s selective licensing scheme. Oxford City Council is the first council in the country to introduce a HMO licensing scheme that covers the whole of its area and that requires every HMO to be licensed.

Progress to date

Since the introduction of the scheme a total of 1219 applications have been received for larger HMOs and 1068 applications for smaller HMOs. There have also been 115 applications for mandatory licensable HMOs. Oxford have already received 25% more applications than originally estimated in the period, and this figure is likely to rise to 40% by the end of March 2013.

Planning restrictions on HMOs (Article 4 Direction) were introduced in Oxford at the end of February 2012. The effect of the Article 4 Direction was that planning permission is required to change the use of a C3 dwellinghouse to a shared rented house (C4 HMO). The impact of this was that 1113 applications were received between 1^st January 2012 and the end of February 2012. This was 40% more than the expected total for the entire 2011/12 year. Another indication of the scale of the applications being dealt with is that in the 5 years before the scheme began, a total of 722 applications had been processed resulting in 551 licensed HMOs.

To date 1228 licences have been issued since the scheme began.

Impact on standards

The impact of licensing on standards within HMOs is significant. The decision to inspect every HMO prior to issuing a licence has proven valuable with very few HMOs being found to be fully compliant with national minimum standards. The House Condition Survey of 2005 estimated that 70% of Oxford’s HMOs were non-compliant, but to date, over 90% of HMOs inspected have required additional conditions on the licence to secure compliance.

The primary cause for additional licence conditions is improving fire precautions to the minimum standards required by national guidance.

Oxford has a Facilities and Amenities Guide which provides guidance for landlords on what are considered acceptable standards for facilities such as kitchens, toilets etc. There have been allegations from some landlords that Oxford has been gold plating these standards, but the guidance has been compared with other similar authorities guidance and found to be broadly in line.

The average cost for upgrading a property to minimum legal standards is £1,552, which is significantly lower than the £4,200 average cost for a mandatory licensable HMO.

There has been a noticeable impact on service requests related to the private rented sector. A before and after comparison of service request codes reveals the following:

Further Information:

• Housing: Oxford scheme licenses every HMO in the city
• Housing: Oxford HIMO Licensing Update