Following the recent Councillors Campaign for Balanced Communities Annual Conference in Nottingham, we heard from Roberta Blackman-Woods MP (Durham) who is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Balanced Communities.

Roberta explained how valuable it was that the previous Minister for Local Government, Phil Woolas, was supportive of new legislation on HMOs, and what a loss it was that he moved elsewhere with the government re-shuffle last year. She identified institutional resistance to new legislation within the Department for Communities & Local Government. She sees the current review of the Private Rented Sector therefore as especially significant in changing attitudes – and lobbying of this Review as especially valuable.

So we are asking all local residents who want to voice there opinions about the situation in Oldfield Park to lobby the PRS Review.

Write to Dr Julie Rugg (Centre for Housing Policy, University of York), who is one of the academics carrying out the Review (see http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/chp/Projects/PRSreview.htm)

I think there are three important points to be made:-

1) HMOs are the problem, not particularly students – it’s the transience of HMO occupants which causes problems, whether these are students in university cities like Bath, or benefit claimants in seaside towns, or migrant workers in market towns, etc;

2) One side of these problems is the disruption HMOs cause to community cohesion – communities become unsustainable when a significant proportion of the population is perpetually changing.

3) Another side, equally important, is the fact that HMOs take away family homes at a time of acute housing shortage – to be used instead as seasonal second homes by students (or as temporary accommodation by others).

Write to Dr Julie Rugg at:

Dr Julie Rugg,

The Centre for Housing Policy,

The University of York,

Heslington,

York.

YO10 5DD

Or email her at jr10@york.ac.uk

We would appreciate you copying in Cllr McGall on: shaun_mcgall@bathnes.gov.uk