Birmingham Conservatives have announced an ambitious new initiative to tackle the city’s acute shortage of family housing by addressing the proliferation of exempt supported accommodation and poorly managed Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), which are taking over the city.
The proposed scheme would involve purchasing badly run exempt accommodation properties and sub-standard HMOs, converting them back into high-quality family homes, and reselling them on the open market to local families. Each property sold would include legally binding covenants preventing future conversion into HMOs or exempt accommodation. Proceeds from the sales would be recycled into a revolving fund to enable further purchases and conversions, creating a self-sustaining programme that steadily increases the supply of family housing across the city.
This scheme would be supplemented by a carrot and stick approach for landlords to encourage them to convert their own properties back into family housing as well. This includes increased enforcement and regulation alongside incentives for converting properties back into family homes, including fast-tracked planning with fees waived where applicable.
There are approximately 12,000 HMOs in Birmingham and more than 30,000 exempt accommodation properties, triple the number in 2018. Tellingly, local needs assessments show an oversupply of exempt accommodation of around 60%, with properties being used to house people from other areas or countries. At the same time, more than 10,000 Birmingham children in 5,500 families are living in temporary accommodation, desperate for a home to call their own.
This explosion in exempt accommodation and HMOs has significantly reduced the stock of suitable family housing, driving up demand, worsening affordability, and contributing to longer waits for family-sized homes.
Councillor Robert Alden, Leader of the Birmingham Conservative Group, said:
Families in Birmingham are being priced out and pushed out by the unchecked growth of exempt accommodation and poorly run HMOs. Thousands of family homes have been lost to this sector, leaving local families struggling to find somewhere decent to raise their children. Our plan is practical, deliverable and affordable. By buying up the worst-performing properties, restoring them as family homes and protecting them with covenants, we will directly increase family housing supply while recycling every pound raised to do more. This is a common-sense Conservative approach to fixing a problem Labour have allowed to spiral out of control.
This will form part of a broader package to reclaim and protect family homes, as set out in our recently published alternative budget, which Labour and all other parties voted against.
Key measures include:
· Buying up poorly managed exempt accommodation and HMOs, then converting them back into family dwellings.
· Scrap the Labour Council's current program of buying family housing to convert it to supported accommodation, literally using taxpayers' money to prevent first-time buyers from being able to get on the housing ladder. Instead we will focus the Council on converting supported accommodation back into family housing.
· Placing protective covenants on any council property disposals to prevent future reconversion to exempt use or large-scale HMOs.
· Stepping up rigorous enforcement against rogue providers, anti-social behaviour, and poor property standards.
· Review all contracts with providers to focus on only using providers who use suitable, purpose-built accommodation instead of converted family housing.
· Presenting a draft statutory instrument to the government minister, asking them to present that to Parliament to bring Exempt Accommodation into the planning system.
Councillor Alden added:
It is only the Local Conservatives who have a plan to clean up this city’s housing and give families the homes and neighbourhoods they deserve. Every other party made it clear they oppose turning exempt accommodation and HMO's back into family housing when they voted against our full costed plans at the budget meeting. A vote for anyone else risks letting Labour back in.
