Moratorium on City Centre HMO’s

Members of The Highland Council’s Planning, Environment and Development Committee today (Wednesday 16 November) agreed to place a 12 month moratorium on granting planning permission for any new multiple occupancy houses in Inverness City Centre.  They also agreed that the updated HMO Interim Supplementary Guidance presented to them be adopted as part of the Highland-wide Local Development Plan.

A draft of the Supplementary Guidance went out to public consultation in August and 199 responses were received.  From these responses it became clear that there was support to control the concentration of HMOs Highland wide with particular support for a moratorium in Inverness city centre.

Feedback from the consultation and the results of joint working between services has been fed into the guidance and members were today asked to approve the changes.  They also agreed action would be taken forward in conjunction with the Inverness Community Safety Partnership and other council services to facilitate the better management of HMO’s across the whole Highlands. 

Close monitoring of the effectiveness and the use of the moratorium will be carried out to ensure the market can provide for future housing needs.

Chairman of the PED Committee, Councillor Ian Ross said:  “HMOs provide an important element of the housing stock in Inverness and across the Highlands. The agreed changes to the guidance will allow us to effectively manage the future concentration of HMOs while still letting us meet our statutory duties to house people who present themselves as homeless.

“This moratorium will allow us to ensure we have a fully joined up approach across all our services with an effective solution in place to allow us to have successful HMOs in the city centre.”