Concerns Rise Over Increasing Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) in Surrey
Residents in a Surrey neighbourhood express concern─their feeling links tightly to the rise of HMOs, properties where separate households share one roof and share kitchens and bathrooms. Each HMO connects persons—students, young professionals, low-income tenants—in a housing network aimed at low-cost residence while intertwining lives and services.
A local homeowner, whose two-decade presence bonds him to the community, considers a sale when a neighbour’s dwelling shifts into a six-person HMO. The homeowner’s alarm grows as the conversion links internal alterations with an external extension, a change that binds property suitability to increasing vehicle numbers and extra waste bins and casts doubt on planning controls and neighbour safeguards.
Local rules require landlords to hold licenses when five or more individuals gather in a property and to obey health and safety mandates; yet the planning permission requirement binds only if a conversion accommodates more than six residents. This gap, a short link in the chain, permits developments to proceed with minimal neighbour protest and with worries about who inhabits these houses and if antisocial acts may arise.
Local authorities note many licensed and unlicensed HMOs exist in the borough─each one a node in a wider network. In some areas, planning controls connect permission to occupancy sizes up to six after past complaints linked small HMOs to community strain. But formal complaints remain few, a fact that ties directly to the limited spread of restrictions across the borough.
The debate divides those who call for tighter regulation to guard neighbourhood character and those who warn that further limits may bind housing affordability and local economic flow. A council planning meeting, a scheduled node in this ongoing discussion, will inspect proposals that may broaden controls on HMOs in the affected wards.
Summary
The growth of shared housing in Surrey raises questions about balancing housing supply with community well-being. HMOs, while binding affordable residence to many, also link property functionality, local resource pressure, and community cohesion in ways that spark ongoing dialogue among residents, developers, landlords, and council officials. Investors and prospective landlords should watch evolving regulations and community responses closely, for these factors may tie directly to shifts in property values and rental demand in areas marked by an increase in HMOs.
