Written evidence submitted by Brandwood Together (Residents Association) [EXA 098]

About Brandwood Together and the basis for our submission

Our residents’ group was formed in 2021 around the Brandwood area in the south of Birmingham. Our main goal is to keep the existing residential character of the area and promote community cohesion. We maintain close contact with our local representatives in order to resolve problems in the area and cooperate with local groups to address citywide issues.

The group started as we joined forces to oppose a planning application for the conversion of a small three-bedroom semi-detached family home into a six-bedroom HMO in March 2021. Birmingham City Council had just introduced a citywide Article 4 that made it compulsory for all HMOs in the city to obtain planning permission. We successfully raised almost 200 objections to this development and the planning department rejected the planning application with a strongly worded report that considered the house inadequate for shared living due to cramped conditions and lack of light. The final decision was based on the Birmingham Development Plan, the main argument being that the city has a shortage of family homes. After the refusal, the planning department inspected the house and confirmed that it was being used not as a HMO but as EA and was therefore outside of their control, and that it was of “a good standard”.

The developers went on to purchase the house next door (a separate 3-bedroom semi-detached house) with the intention to convert it into another supported accommodation. These two houses were acquired after elderly residents passed away, without ever being offered on the housing market as family homes, and for what appeared to be rates well below market value. We fear that other houses in the area will be targeted in the same way and the whole community could be transformed if nothing is done to control the conversion of much needed family homes into not needed EA (a BCC “needs assessment” has concluded that Birmingham has an oversupply of over 13k units of EA – it only needs 9k out of the current 22k units). Sadly, this has already happened in other areas of the city, including the adjacent Selly Oak constituency, which are blighted by badly run shared accommodation (HMOs and EA).

Our submission covers only some of the questions in your call for evidence. We responded to the ones we felt our experience may contribute to the discussion and help you find solutions.

1) What is the quality of exempt housing provision?

Our local EA example

Physical conditions

Despite the house being considered inadequate by the planning department for use as a HMO, it is being used to house vulnerable tenants as exempt accommodation. The HMO application final report notes that the house is not accessible for disabled people due to access restrictions, but it now houses a wheelchair user as EA (to enable access to the front door there is a temporary ramp borrowed from a neighbour). Despite the exorbitant rents charged in EA the landlords do not invest to provide minimum access requirements for their tenants. The garden area is reduced to a small, enclosed patio to the rear. There is no greenery. The rest of the garden is a building site wasteland with rubble, rusting diggers and other building equipment. There is not enough space for the rubbish bins, resulting sometimes in black bags scattered in front of the house.

Quality of care

It is a weekly occurrence to have ambulances in front of the house, and less frequently the Police. After local shop owners raised concerns regarding the welfare of the young tenants, we struggled to have these concerns investigated. Birmingham City Council pointed us to CQC and CQC to BCC (the support agency in charge now seems to be the subject of an investigation by CQC). There are no specific regulations about the care that should be provided in exempt accommodation, the only requirement is that it should be “more than minimum “. The carers did not respect quarantine rules and attended the house in family groups, never wearing masks. We are unsure regarding the qualifications of the care staff.

Location

The young residents that occupy the house are not from the Birmingham area. In the same manner as a large proportion of EA residents in the city, they were moved in from other locations and do not have a support network of family or friends near them.

The next paragraphs address question 3 and 5.

3) Are there significant geographical and regional differences in the provision and the problems of exempt accommodation?

8) What should be the regulations governing exempt accommodation and how should those regulations be enforced?

Local level

There should be a proper needs assessment process to check each new application for EA. Manchester and Hull seem to have systems in place to assess the validity of their claims and weight each one against local needs. In Manchester they first check if the proposed scheme meets the criteria for being 'exempt accommodation' within the HB rules. Then the “Council's Supported Needs Monitoring Group (SNMG) looks at the nature of each application, the proposed accommodation itself and where it is located. They consider not only what each project brings to the community but also the level of supported accommodation already in place around each location.” [1] For regulation and control LAs should have multi-disciplinary teams with full oversight of EA with ongoing spot checks and powers of enforcement. As recommended by the Birmingham Scrutiny Committee, this should include Environmental Health, Fleet and Waste, Planning, Housing Benefit, Adult Social Care and Community Safety.

National level

There should be tighter planning controls to prevent neighbourhoods being taken over by Exempt Accommodation. The exemption of EA from being treated as HMO (Housing Act 2004, Schedule 14) needs to be revoked as clearly EA has the same impact on communities as HMOs. At the time of the Housing Act 2004 most supported housing was provided by local authorities. This is no longer the case, and the social housing exemption rule is being exploited by unscrupulous developers to bypass existing regulations and benefit from the lack of caps for this type of HB.

The next paragraphs address question 3 and 10.

10) Is there sufficient publicly available knowledge about EA?

3) What are the regional differences in the provision of EA and in associated problems?

General public

No, there is not sufficient publicly available knowledge about EA. We were not aware of the difference between HMOs and EA before experiencing the issue in our area, and less so of the extent of the problem in Birmingham. Local news Birmingham Live[2] run a series of reports on Exempt accommodation and how it is destroying whole neighbourhoods in the city, making the life of residents and tenants alike a misery. The Observer also had an extensive piece on the issue.[3]

Regarding our specific example, the planning department was fully aware that the developers had the option to run their shared house as EA if their HMO application failed. We residents did not have access to this knowledge. Their strong worded report refusing permission for a HMO felt very much like an empty gesture to placate local residents. The citywide Article 4 in Birmingham cannot control the proliferation of HMOs as developers can bypass the regulations by renting their properties out as EA, due to the exemption of registered social housing from planning regulations. The same can be said regarding a new licensing scheme under consultation for some of the city wards. HMOs that fail to get a license will be able to run as EA as these are not covered by the scheme.

Agents

Although there is scarce knowledge amongst the public regarding exempt accommodation, the same cannot be said about agents promoting the Birmingham model to prospective developers. They run seminars on how to convert your Buy to Let into social housing and share videos where they say that “Social Housing is definitely an option for those of you with properties in the Birmingham City Council area”.[4] These are some extracts from one of the seminars:

“I work with 6 or 7 social housing providers, if someone comes to me with a property in Birmingham and it is suitable to be converted, I will know by the time it is finished which provider is going to take it on. In Birmingham it is really an easy simple straightforward process. It is more difficult if you want to do this for yourself in your own area. Not all councils will engage to do social housing, someone comes to me and say I want to do social housing in Solihull, I say I can’t do it, I am really sorry.”

“What happens when article 4 comes into effect in terms of new HMOs, you know if there are any exemptions on planning for that? A. As far as article 4 goes providing the property is leased to a registered provider, and there is a difference between registered provider and just straight forward social housing. It has to be leased to a register provider; it is exempt.”

“I talk about social housing as being like a hybrid model... because you have a house which is a HMO because you got 4,5,6 people living in it, so it meets the definitions of a HMO but you get paid as it if was a buy to let.”

Conclusion

Some local authorities seem to have mechanisms to control the use of this type of accommodation in accordance with a local needs assessment. Therefore, they did not see the same level of growth of EA as in Birmingham, which saw its numbers rise from 14k in November 2019 to 22k in November 2021. The recent Birmingham City Council Scrutiny Committee inquiry received evidence of the negative impact of EA and in December 2021, the council passed a series of recommendations for which we are awaiting implementation.

We were invited to join other active community groups in the Exempt Accommodation Forum, under the guidance of Cllr Sharon Thompson who was Cabinet Member for Homes and Neighbourhoods at the time. We have since contributed to the discussion and have learned how similar the experience of other residents is regarding the disruption caused by these properties, their poor value for money and their total lack of accountability. We are hopeful that this Inquiry will shed light on the reasons for the expansion of this model of housing in cities like Birmingham and inform a solution that will bring much needed change to the planning legislation that is allowing rogue developers to take advantage of vulnerable people in need of housing and destroying whole communities in the process.

January 2022