Clause 193 - HMOs: certain converted blocks of flats
Housing Bill
10:00 am
Mr Matthew Green (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Local Government & the Regions; Ludlow, Liberal Democrat)
Amendment No. 240 is a probing amendment. My understanding of the current position is that the provision applies if less than one third of the self-contained flats in a property are owner-occupied. I believe that the Conservative amendment, No. 284 is trying to amend the Bill so that the current position stands—I believe that the British Property Federation is interested in that. Amendment No. 240 is designed to elicit clarification.
In London and other cities, there might be large blocks of flats that contain a considerable number of properties that are tenanted, but they constitute less than third of the properties in the block. The term ''at least three'' was put in my probing amendment to ascertain what the Minister is trying to achieve with the two-thirds provision. In a block of flats with 100 properties, 30 would constitute less than two thirds of the properties, but that is still a lot of tenanted accommodation. Clearly the circumstances are different if there are five properties and two are tenanted.
I am not saying that my amendment offers the right way forward. I suspect that the Conservative amendment leans too far in the other direction, but I am concerned that the Minister has potentially excluded some large blocks of flats where somebody owns quite a lot of them and is renting them out. Therefore, mine is a probing amendment to find out how the Minister might deal with such a situation.