Action call over ‘terrible parking congestion’ outside Peterborough shared homes

A motion has been submitted for next week’s Full Council meeting at Peterborough City Council by Conservative member for Fletton & Woodston Andy Coles.

Cllr Coles said that currently, planning permission for an HMO with six or fewer people is not required as it is permitted development, meaning “there is no planning control and the impact... upon parking provision cannot be taken into account.”

His motion states: “I have been receiving many complaints from my residents about terrible parking congestion in local streets. Further investigation has shown that a lot of the extra vehicles belong to residents of homes of multiple occupation who understandably want to park in their street.

“I am aware that congestion from HMOs is affecting other wards across the city.

“This problem is getting worse in Peterborough, particularly where there are narrow Victorian streets, or in newer developments where a past Labour Government planning policy deliberately reduced parking spaces for environmental reasons.

“There is a provision within the legislation to remove rights for permitted development through an Article 4 direction which can be used to prevent further HMOs being developed without the need for planning permission. They would then have to be assessed in the same way as a planning application for larger HMO schemes.”

The motion calls for the council to consider: identifying specific locations across the city where the concentration of HMOs is having a “significant and disruptive impact on the local residential community” and “developing an Article 4 direction to apply to all future HMO developments in these specified areas so that the council can require a full planning application to be made which will require owners to apply a limited parking ratio to their properties.”