Selective Licencing – 1 room is 10cm too small?

Just move the door out 1cm.

Stephanie, if I were you I would challenge this with a more senior officer or the responsible Portfolio Councillor for Housing etc. The local authority must be able to justify its position if it is unwilling to license your property. Potentially this is a difficult situation for the la bearing in mind that the bedroom is not 'illegal' but according to the standards not licensable. Assuming that you are using the property in the original format and not using communal space as a bedroom there will as pointed out above be many similar properties still under la ownership and the rooms which were built as bedrooms will still be occupied in that way albeit probably by a single household. The purpose of licensing is to apply reasonable standards for occupiers and there has to be a cut off point but your rooms are so close to the specified standard that you would hope for some discretion. I believe many local authorities are desperately short of experienced and qualified staff and I think it is worth challenging any decision that doesn't seem to make sense, particularly when the outcome is to propose making someone homeless.
In practical terms with the expected removal of section 21 what would be the grounds for serving notice under section 8 in future? As it is I am unclear how you can proceed without giving notice to the whole group.

First check that the council is applying the same room size restrictions as required by law. Some councils are applying a larger room size requirement that you could possibly appeal against. Did they measure between skirting boards, if so removing the skirting boards would generate the additional space required. Alternatively, if this is a tower block and many other rooms/landlords are in the same situation, appeal to the council with a letter that states x number of tenants will become homeless. If you get a nasty response get the local press involved. See what happens! If they still demand that the room needs to be enlarged, you will need to request sufficient time to do the job "post acceptance by the council of the planned work". Hopefully it's a stud wall! Unfortunately as the room size is written in law some councils are not given any leeway on room size.

Reply to the comment left by REB at 06/12/2019 - 11:17
There are minimum room sizes for HMOs. They are different from lets of whole houses where perhaps a child's bedroom is below 6.5 square metres. It is comparatively easy to move stud walls in a modern house. Another factor is that if there is a fitted wardrobe the Council don't count it. I know I would rather have a 6.4 sqm room with a fitted wardrobe than a 6.5 sqm room without where the wardrobe takes up over 0.5sqm of space but that's the way the Councils measure.

As I understand it the 6.51 m is not something they can take a view on. 20% of our portfolio had rooms too small so we simply evicted everybody and sold the properties off. Sad because the main loser as always with legislation like this that hasn’t been thought about is always the tenant. On another property we have in Southwark we had no living room so the requirement was 10 m for a single person minimum. I took them to tribunal because one of them was 8.51 m. Before the tribunal we had a mediation meeting and I told them that they would lose because anybody with an ounce of common sense would not say that this perfectly habitable room had to remain empty permanently. After some weeks they decided to give in to me and so I have permission.

Did the tenancy start before the conditions were introduced?

It is my understanding that licence conditions cannot affect existing tenancies that meet central government legislation.

Also this link may be relevant: https://nearlylegal.co.uk/2018/10/who-lives-in-a-shared-home-like-this/?highlight=%22who%20lives%20in%20a%22

We had the same in Nottingham at the beginning of Licensing.

The second in command of Licensing said We will have 18 months to give the tenant time to find somewhere where she is not deemed as overcrowding. I worked out approx 40% of my houses have 'too small' rooms per new October 2015 regs/rules.
I said to the homeless section, When this woman with 4 kids comes down here who is so grateful that their youngest kid has got their own room, when she comes down & says I've been kicked out cause Nottingham http://www.selectivelicensingtruth.co.uk says my bedrooms too small, what are u going to do Miss Nottingham Council Homeless section?
They said they gonna ring me up & say Mick, have u got any houses for this woman? And then they gonna' assist her in putting her in one of my other maybe smaller houses & may also pay her deposit & rent up front. You couldn't make it up. Council no joined up thinking by those in Licensing.

Ross says it perfectly, I'll leave it empty then. And u know the tenant ain't gonna' leave a room empty. Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

On the other side, the Council houses are actually noting down their smaller size bedrooms that they cannot class as a bedroom, so they can get the tenant out of paying bedroom tax. Again no joined up thinking with Govt.

Why not get tenants to write in saying They happy as they are there? I got that unofficially from the sensible people in Licensing, they said if tenant wishes to stay, we have to listen to that.

I'm surprised they are asking you to vacate the smaller room and make that person homeless, am sure that conflicts with other housing policies? My experience with other councils is that they are happy for the existing tenant to stay in situ but when that person moves out it cannot be re-let to somebody else until the room size is increased.

I have similar in a 3 bed student hmo. I think I can solve it by moving the door outwards. I managed to negotiate for the date this need to be achieved by to be 1st September 2020 when the next tenancy begins. This saves me having me having to disturb the current tenants. May be worth seeing if you can get movement on the date if not on the requirement itself.

Reply to the comment left by Prakash Tanna at 07/12/2019 - 10:11
In my experience they do not ask for the room to be vacated, but you cannot re-let. So they do not make anyone homeless, but are happy for homeless on the streets (legal) rather than comfortably in a room that someone who is not looking at the big picture considers too small. Pathetic of course