Understanding the legal changes from 1 October on high rents and HMOs and planning. The Guild of Residential Landlords is assisting Training for Professionals with a free of charge webinar on 27 October 2010. Register now Join us for a Webinar on October 27 This is a free to attend webinar looking at the legal changes that occurred from the 1 October. We will explain the legal changes and try and answer as many questions as possible. It will...

What is an Enforcement Notice? An enforcement notice is issued by a local authority where a development requiring planning permission has taken place without planning permission forst being obtained. An enforcement notice could seek that the development be restored to it’s previous state for example. If I don’t have planning permission, what is the criteria for a local authority to serve an enforcement notice on me? An enforcement...

This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series House in Multiple Occupation (HMO)From 1 October 2010, incorporating changes already made on 6 April 2010, planning rules are changed affecting HMOs. What is an HMO? A simple non legal definition is that a house (or flat) is an HMO if there are three or more unrelated occupiers. There is also another type of HMO under section 257 Housing Act 2004 which provides for certain converted blocks of flats to be...

Landlords and councils will no longer be faced with bureaucracy aimed at micro-managing rented housing, Housing Minister Grant Shapps confirmed today. The Minister laid new regulations that could cut as many as 8,500 planning applications from the system, freeing up councils to focus on local priorities. Currently landlords have to submit a planning application to rent their properties to unrelated tenants – known as Houses in...

I have a large banner outside my HMO, advertising rooms to let and showing certain facilities for example broadband included in the rent etc. The local authority have requested that I remove the banner. All I am doing is advertising rooms to let just like when an agent puts up a to let board. Must I remove the banner?