The government's announcement of new regulations to bring student lets under planning control in early April has been welcomed by campaigning local councillor, Roger Pierce.

The Hull Road ward councillor has long sought changes to planning rules to give local councils more of a say over where Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs) are granted licences, to deliver better mixes of housing across the city. He said:

"The new regulations introduce a new class of HMO for tenants who are unrelated and share basic amenities. So planning permission will be required where owners intend to change the use of 'dwelling houses' to let to students or other tenants.

"The new system will not be applied retrospectively so existing student lets will not be directly affected. But, by my interpretation, they will lose their permitted development rights to construct large extensions without requiring planning permission or to convert front gardens into car parking. So the seemingly unstoppable and uncontrollable deterioration in the character of vulnerable areas like Badger Hill - where one in five houses is a student let - will be arrested.

"However, the council will not be able to refuse planning permission willy-nilly. It will have to develop a coherent and defensible policy. The effect of the new changes will be twofold: to disperse new student lets across a wider area of the city and encourage the development of new, purpose-designed student housing".

Whilst Coun. Pierce welcomes the new legislation, he also wants to wave goodbye to the clutter of agents' hoardings advertising properties for students as being 'let'.

He explains:

"Whilst the law allows estates agents or owners to erect signs where properties are available for sale or to let, signs saying 'sold' or 'let' can only be displayed for fourteen days. Unfortunately these signs often stay erected beyond the legal maximum period allowed".

He called on local letting agents to keep to the law and, if not, for the council to prosecute the worst offenders to act as a deterrent to others. He has already started to compile a list of agents' 'to let' signs in Hull Road ward and will send details of these to the council when the fourteen day period of grace has expired.