A landlord has been told by Tower Hamlets Council they can’t keep using a two-bed flat to house five people.
The owner of the flat, above a phone repair shop in Roman Road, had already been using it as a home for up to five people, having turned the living room into a third bedroom.
But council planning officers said this left tenants with “an inadequate standard of accommodation”.
The owner of the flat, Rizwan Bashir, applied for planning permission to change the use of the flat into a house of multiple occupation, where residents form separate households using shared facilities in February. Changes of use usually require planning permission even if there are no alterations to the building.
The application was for ‘retrospective’ planning permission, meaning the change had already taken place. Plans showed the flat previously had two bedrooms, but that the living room was now being used as a third.
A planning statement submitted with Bashir’s application said the bedrooms in the flat met the council’s size standards – with two of them suitable as double rooms and one of them suitable for a single person.
The statement also said two of the bedrooms would contain their own small kitchen facilities.
Council officers agreed that the sizes of the bedrooms were sufficient, but said the flat did not have enough communal living and kitchen space.
Borough planning policy said that a five-person house of multiple occupations need a living room of at least 15 square metres. It also said a shared kitchen for up to three people should be at least 5.5sqm.
A planning officers’ report said: “The proposed house of multiple occupation does not meet any of these standards, with no communal area proposed and a shared kitchen facility of 2.4sqm.
“In consideration of the above, the proposed house of multiple occupation would provide an inadequate standard of accommodation and fails to meet the aforementioned policy requirements.”
Council planning officers refused the application on Friday 1 May.
