Council to tighten controls on HMO hotspots
Plus jobs at risk at Chatham Docks, lots more council news, news in brief, and more
Medway is set to impose an Article 4 Direction on its HMO hotspots, the most significant shift in years in how the council manages shared housing. It comes amid fresh HMO applications, stalled developments, and housebuilding figures that remain well off target. Further down, 85 jobs are now at risk at Chatham Docks as Peel continues to push to redevelop the site, lots more council news, news in brief, and more.
Council to tighten controls on HMO hotspots
Medway Council is preparing to take its most significant step yet to get a grip on the spread of Houses in Multiple Occupation. Next week, Cabinet will decide whether to introduce an immediate Article 4 Direction across seven wards, stripping automatic planning rights from new small HMOs in the areas with the highest concentration of them.
If, or rather when, approved, the change will mean any new HMO with three to six tenants in Luton, Chatham Central and Brompton, Fort Pitt, Gillingham North, Gillingham South, Watling, or Strood North and Frindsbury, will need full planning permission. The Direction would come into force almost immediately once the notice is issued. Existing HMOs would be unaffected.
The move has been years in the making. “It’s something that we’ve wanted to do for quite a long time actually,” Cllr Simon Curry, Medway Council Portfolio Holder for Climate Change and Strategic Regeneration, told us. “It’s one of those things that we think of as a tool in the toolbox about making improvements to people’s standard and quality of life in Medway and our communities.”
That toolbox is being built around a simple pattern. The pressures created by dense clusters of HMOs are mostly being felt in the same central areas of Medway. The council’s evidence shows Medway has an estimated 1,018 known or predicted HMOs. About 65% of them are in the seven wards covered by the Article 4 proposal. Gillingham South alone accounts for roughly a fifth of all HMOs in Medway.
Across those wards, the picture is consistent. A high number of properties are predicted to contain serious hazards. A high number of complaints from tenants. A high number of anti-social behaviour incidents linked to HMOs. Most sit within terraced neighbourhoods where parking is already tight, waste storage is difficult, and houses have been converted repeatedly over the past decade.
“We’ve got a huge pressure for HMOs in Medway, as across the whole country,” Cllr Curry said. “HMOs are a valuable place for a lot of people to live, but we need to retain control over that and how we manage that.”
Small HMOs can currently be created through permitted development. Landlords can convert a family home into a six-bed HMO without any planning application at all. Article 4 removes that right, but only in the areas where a council can prove the move is necessary. National policy requires directions to cover the smallest area possible, and only where there is robust evidence of harm.
“You have to target the areas where there is a need to control development in this way,” Curry said. When we asked why the approach isn’t Medway-wide, he was clear that the council were “not allowed to.”
If Cabinet signs off the Direction, every new HMO in the seven wards will be decided case by case. Planning committees will be able to consider issues such as concentration, layout, amenity, parking and waste provision, rather than watching schemes proceed automatically. But Article 4 does not necessarily make refusal easier. Some proposals will still meet the older Local Plan criteria and be approved.
The immediate version of Article 4 also carries a financial risk. For the first 12 months, a landlord whose application is refused can seek compensation for losses directly attributable to the withdrawal of permitted development rights. The council has no specific budget for this, and the report notes any claims would have to be met from the wider finances of the authority. It is a risk Medway appears prepared to take.
The Direction is coming forward at a moment when HMO activity has surged. Next week’s planning committee includes four separate HMO applications in Gillingham South alone. Similar plans have appeared on almost every recent agenda.
Alongside Article 4, the council is also preparing to bring forward selective licensing and additional licensing for larger HMOs. That scheme has not yet launched, but Cabinet papers show it would cover more than half of Medway’s private rented sector in the seven wards with the highest predicted hazard levels. Licensing would sit alongside planning controls, targeting property condition and management rather than land use.
“Most landlords in Medway provide a really incredibly valuable places for people to live,” Curry said. “However, we all know there are some horror stories. People are living in some really quite appalling conditions. We need to change that.”
The Direction may curb the rapid expansion of HMOs in the central wards, but the forces driving them remain unchanged. Medway’s housing shortage will continue to push people towards shared accommodation, and the pressure is unlikely to ease until the borough can offer alternatives.
Other council news
There’s a lot going on in the papers for council meetings over the next week:
As the council moves to restrict HMOs, next week’s planning committee sees officers recommending four new ones are approved. At the same time, officers recommend the refusal of up to 240 new affordable homes, within a 800 home development north of Wainscott. The developer has already indicated that they will take the council’s lack of decision so far to appeal.
Housebuilding rates in Medway have collapsed in the past year. Only 634 homes were completed last year, well short of the annual requirement of 1,636. Medway Council insists that this figure is similar in other areas, and there has been no slow down in the number of planning applications in the pipeline.
Medway Council will offload public toilets in High Halstow and Cooling to local groups if possible, or if not, close the facilities, to save the council a token sum of money.
Consideration is currently being given to creating a ‘wet room’ in Chatham town centre where street drinkers could go and drink in a supervised environment, while also being signposted toward support services.
Medway Council and Kent County Council have come to an agreement over creating replacements for the recently collapsed VisitKent and Locate in Kent. Over £470,000 will be invested, with each council putting in an amount in line with its population size. The agreement nearly collapsed when Reform-led KCC demanded more money from Medway at the last minute.
A number of greenspace roles will be transferred from Medway Norse to in-house at Medway Council. Norse will continue to do the day-to-day jobs like cutting grass and emptying bins while Medway Council will taken on longer term planning for green spaces. The council claims there is no additional cost in doing this, which begs the question why it was outsourced out in the first place.
Jobs at risk at Chatham Docks
ArcelorMittal Kent Wire has begun consulting on 85 redundancies at its Chatham Docks site, adding a new layer of uncertainty to the future of the complex.
The steel manufacturer said every job is now at risk “due to the severity and scale of the challenges facing the business,” citing low demand, competition from China and US tariffs.
The announcement comes amid a long-running dispute over the redevelopment of the docks. ArcelorMittal was the principal objector to Peel Waters’ Basin 3 proposals, which Medway Council approved last year. The firm argued that the scheme would leave it unable to remain on the site and warned that closure or relocation overseas was likely if the plans went ahead.
Planning officers recommended approval on the basis that the application conformed to Medway’s 2003 Local Plan. Councillors agreed in May 2024, and after the government declined to call in the decision later that year, formal approval was confirmed in October.
ArcelorMittal subsequently launched a judicial review. The High Court heard the case in October this year. The judgment, which will determine whether the permission stands or must be retaken, has not yet been issued.
Peel Waters said it has spent more than a decade working with tenants on relocation options and remains committed to Basin 3. The company argues the scheme will create new workspace, improve public access along the waterfront, and bring more jobs to the site over time.
In brief
🏥 NHS staff at Medway NHS Foundation Trust are being offered the opportunity to resign in exchange for a severance payment to help save money.
🏚️ The Sun has discovered the looming misery spectacle of the Spembley building in Chatham.
🏪 Tesco has opened a new Express store on Napier Road in Gillingham.
🧪 Bomb disposal teams helped remove chemicals from the Universities at Medway site over the weekend.
Residents are moving into Thackeray House, a 44-home affordable development for older people, completed on Corporation Street in Rochester.
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