Corby has seen an increase in the number of HMOs in the past few years. According to reports, the number of HMOs now exceeds 400, just over half of these have already been licenced but due to the change in licencing requirements almost another 200 require licences.
In October 2018 the government changed the rules regarding licencing of HMOs and any HMO with 5 bedrooms or more now requires a licence, regardless of the number of stories.
This has meant a large task awaits Corby Council in licencing these properties.
A new Environmental Health Officer role has been created at a cost of £40,000 per annum.
Environmental Protection and Private Sector Housing Manager Amy Plank, said: “Over the last two years the borough has grown in size in terms of the number of houses and with this there has been a significant increase in the number of domestic dwellings being converted into HMOs.
“Due to this legislative change, most of the HMOs that the Private Sector Housing Team deal with fit into this new category and the numbers are a lot higher than was initially expected.
“The level of demand to deal with this volume of work within the private rented sector was not known from the outset in terms of the number of non-compliant landlords operating as the priority was on processing the large number of HMO applications from the compliant landlords.
“After months of investigating and inspecting HMOs across the borough, the level of demand for and associated workload related to this new licensing function is now better known.