Reform UK-led Bradford Council hopes to introduce an Article 4 Direction across the district, limiting local growth of HMOs, while Breckland Council has plans to do the same – in the area of Norfolk where anti-asylum protests took place.

Bradford’s Reform UK group believes that neighbourhoods with HMOs often experience adverse effects, including loss of family housing, excess waste, noise disturbance and anti-social behaviour.

It announced the move at the same time as its plans to withdraw the council from Bradford City of Sanctuary status – which has historically actively campaigned for improved employment rights for recently arrived migrants, and against illegal immigration raids and detentions. The plans will be discussed at a council meeting on 14 October.

Upset

“Our motions may upset oversensitive political opponents but are firmly in the public interest,” says councillor Jayne Morgan, executive member for healthy people (pictured). “Local people regularly share their frustrations about poor quality HMOs popping up around Bradford, and so we are proposing strong, sensible measures to manage our housing market and limit their growth.”

Meanwhile, Conservative-run Breckland District Council is set to consider making an immediate Article 4 Direction. In August, large groups gathered outside properties in Thetford where they believed asylum seekers were being housed.

Its report explains the authority’s concern arising from events in Thetford and Watton is not that asylum accommodation should be equated with HMOs or that asylum seekers themselves are the cause of disorder. Rather, that “the events have demonstrated the wider community-safety and place-management pressures that can arise where accommodation is procured and occupied at pace, while the council has limited control over the location and use of properties”.

Declined

“The council has also identified instances where properties which it has declined through its consultation process have subsequently been procured or progressed. This has reinforced the council’s concern that its existing ability to influence the location and cumulative concentration of certain forms of accommodation is limited. This has led to the social issues that have taken place in Watton and Thetford over the last few months.”

An Article 4 Direction would not give the council a veto over asylum dispersal or individual placements, but would give it greater planning control over qualifying C3 to C4 changes of use, it explains.

Councillors will discuss the plans at a meeting on 28 September.

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