Portsmouth HMO rejected to protect property as "much-needed family home" but four others accepted

Plans for houses in multiple occupation were determined during Portsmouth City Council’s planning committee on Wednesday (July 10), which approved all but one. An application to add another bedroom to a six-bed terraced HMO on 24 Burlington Road was refused on the grounds of usable communal and bedroom space.

Speaking on behalf of the applicant as a director of development firm Applecore PDM Limited, Carianne Wells told the committee: “In reality, you’re only considering the one extra bedroom. This one had an unusually low amount of rejections, so it wasn’t due to be coming to this committee. Councillor [Benedict] Swann made a late-stage objection which triggered the need to come here today.”

Ms Wells added that all bedrooms meet the required space standards of 10 sqm each, with the communal area measuring nearly 1.5 sqm over the required 11.5 sqm. This was challenged by Cllr Swann, who argued that there is not enough usable space in the bedrooms, taking door circulation and corridors into account.

“The communal area is measured at 23.98 sqm, but as all of the bedrooms are not 10 sqm or above, the communal space needs to be 34 sqm. We really need to be looking stringently into room sizes because these issues are being raised more and more, especially when more undersized houses are coming before this planning committee. None of the bedrooms in this proposal can be called spacious – the property is better off being used as a much-needed family home.”

The chairman of the committee motioned to refuse the application, citing inadequate communal and bedroom space along with a lack of natural light. All other applications were approved, including two eight-bed HMOs at 93 Gladys Avenue in Nelson and 45 Allaway Avenue in Paulsgrove. Additionally, seven-bed HMOs were approved at 101 Gladys Avenue in Nelson and 245 Laburnum Grove in Copnor.