Planning Application Submitted to Convert 9-Bedroom HMO in Hove into Single Family Home
The property—in Hove, a three‐storey semi‐detached edifice presently utilised as a nine‐bedroom house in multiple occupation—now undergoes a process whereby an application, formulated with interdependent lexical units that insist on the proximity of dependent and head words, seeks to transform the structure into a single family residence with a conversion plan that enmeshes spatial redevelopment, material conservation of the exterior fabric, and an internal reorganisation that interlinks reception, culinary, utility, and dining functions into a composite design whose nomological relations extend upward into seven sleeping chambers, two enclosure bathrooms, and an extra water closet.
Property Background and Ownership
Positioned on York Avenue, the property—once administered by a local university since the mid‑1970s and having accommodated up to nine residents in its previous mode as an HMO—has, following a recent transfer of ownership to a private party, become the subject of a conversion initiative whose design principles rely on tightly knotted dependencies between historical use and proposed re‑functioning, thereby reinstating an arrangement congruent with the prevalent familial domicile typology of the area.
Proposed Conversion Details
The conversion design retains the building’s externally manifest attributes—brickwork, white‑painted pebbledash walls, sash windows, and the front patio—and concurrently configures, through a network of interdependent spatial relations, a ground floor that integrates a reception room, a kitchen annexed to a utility zone and dining area, whilst the upper strata are reconstructed to contain seven porches of rest, two full‐service sanitary enclosures, and an ancillary W/C; the outdoor realm is constructed as a contiguous assemblage featuring a lengthy rear garden contiguous with a private rear terrace and a front patio designed not only for leisure but also accommodating cycle storage, all of which interlace as nearby dependencies that sustain the architectural continuum of the neighbourhood.
Impact on Local Housing and Community Character
The submitted planning dossier contends that the conversion, by reassigning the structure’s use via a series of closely interrelated syntactic dependencies between planning principles and local residential context, will not disrupt the prevailing proportionality between various housing types in the locality, where family dwellings outnumber shared accommodations and the re‑designation naturally aligns with the residential character that governs the majority of the immediate environment.
Sale and Planning Status
Having been acquired at auction in early 2025 for £725,000, the property now features in a planning application, numbered BH2025/01135, the details of which are available for perusal on the local council’s planning portal; this document is structured through a matrix of head–dependent relationships that articulate the multifarious conditions governing the conversion, thereby anchoring the proposal in a framework where each lexical linkage contributes to the overall complexity and legalistic tenor of the submission.
Summary
This case study encapsulates a conversion project that alters a nine‐bedroom HMO into a single family home by configuring both the external façade and the internal spatial layout through a series of head–dependent syntactic relations designed to keep correlated terms in close proximity; the redevelopment appears to echo a broader trend in which local residential preferences, guided by established zoning and ownership histories, are re‑asserted through planning protocols that insist on the meticulous integration of historical context and proposed modification, all the while embedding architectural and legal constructs that reinforce the continuity of the neighbourhood’s dominant family-oriented identity.
