Barnet HMO appeal dismissed after parking evidence falls short

A Barnet HMO appeal has been dismissed after the Inspector found that a retrospective three-bedroom, four-person HMO conflicted with local housing policy and that the appellant’s parking evidence did not amount to a proper Lambeth-style parking stress survey.

The property at 217 Colney Hatch Lane, London N10 1AP, had changed from a Class C3 family dwelling to a Class C4 HMO. Barnet’s borough-wide HMO Article 4 Direction meant planning permission was required.

The Article 4 Direction was only the doorway into the planning system. It did not decide whether permission should be granted. The Inspector still had to assess the HMO against the Local Plan, its location, loss of family housing and the actual parking evidence.

The Barnet HMO failed more than one policy test

Barnet Local Plan Policy HOU04 supports HMOs where a number of separate criteria are met. Those include evidence of an identified need and a location with suitable access by public transport, cycling and walking.

The Inspector found no compelling evidence of an identified need for another HMO in this part of Barnet. The fact that the property was already being used as an HMO did not itself demonstrate that need.

The appeal also involved the loss of a three-bedroom family dwelling. That weighed against the proposal when read with the council’s housing policies.

The site has a Public Transport Accessibility Level, or PTAL, of 2. The Inspector regarded accessibility as poor overall and noted that the property was not close to a railway or Underground station or a town centre.

Compliance with other HMO standards did not cure these separate problems. Meeting one criterion does not automatically satisfy every part of Policy HOU04.

The Planning Statement now supplied to Planning Geek also shows a wider weakness in the application case. It relied on the 2023 NPPF and Barnet’s former CS3, DM01 and DM02 policy framework. Barnet adopted its replacement Local Plan on 4th March 2025, and the appeal was ultimately determined against the current HOU02, HOU04 and TRC03 policies.

That is a useful practical lesson. Licensing, internal safety and amenity evidence may all be relevant, but they do not replace evidence addressing the development plan policies actually in force when the application or appeal is determined.

Article 4 did not mean the HMO had to be refused

Barnet’s borough-wide HMO Article 4 Direction requires planning permission for a change from C3 to C4.

That removes the normal permitted development route. It does not create a policy saying every HMO application must fail.

This distinction matters nationally. An Article 4 Direction controls whether planning permission is needed. The application itself still has to be decided on its planning merits against the development plan and other material considerations.

The parking evidence was observations, not a proper survey

The parking part of the decision is particularly useful because it explains why casual observations of empty spaces are not the same as a measured parking stress survey.

The Inspector recorded that the appellant had observed what was described as ample spare on-street parking capacity at three specific times during a two-week period.

But the claimed spare capacity was not quantified. The Inspector said the Lambeth Methodology had not been followed, and the evidence appeared to relate only to the Colney Hatch Lane frontages rather than the nearby residential side streets.

That geographical point mattered. Colney Hatch Lane at this location is a curved dualled section of the B550 close to the North Circular interchange. The Inspector considered that parking immediately outside the appeal property was unlikely to be a realistic or safe option, even where there was no formal restriction.

Future occupants would therefore be more likely to look for parking in the side streets. Those were the very streets that the submitted observations appeared not to assess properly.

Our new guide to the Lambeth Parking survey methodology explains how a proper parking stress survey defines a realistic walking area, measures usable kerb capacity, counts parked vehicles and calculates parking stress.

What exactly did the appellant do?

The appeal decision gives us a firm minimum answer: there were parking observations at three specified times across a two-week period, and the appellant said those observations showed ample spare capacity.

The Inspector does not identify the three dates or clock times in the decision. Nor does the decision establish the measured length of Colney Hatch Lane, any street-by-street kerb calculation, a count of theoretical spaces, a count of occupied spaces or a parking-stress percentage.

The separate Supporting Evidence document submitted with the application on 17th December 2025 has now been checked. It deals with the HMO licence, compliance works, management and policy alignment. It does not contain the three parking observations referred to by the Inspector. Both the Supporting Evidence and Planning Statement are headed 25/5055/FUL, but the appeal decision records the planning application reference as 25/5055/RCU.

The separate Planning Statement has now also been checked. It says the HMO had been in use since at least 2012, although managing-agent records were only available from 2017. It contains no parking survey, parking counts, observation dates or observation times. The statement’s reference to HMO use since 2012 is an assertion in the application material, not a finding that the use had become lawful: the Inspector expressly said that this appeal was not determining whether the existing HMO use had become established through the passage of time.

Neither the Planning Statement nor the Supporting Evidence is therefore the source of the three parking observations referred to by the Inspector. I cannot safely say whether photographs were supplied, whether individual vehicles were counted, how far along Colney Hatch Lane the observations extended, or whether any side road was recorded at all. The Inspector’s wording only lets us say that the evidence appeared to be confined to the Colney Hatch Lane frontages.

Planning Geek analysis: the safest description is therefore a series of parking observations, not a Lambeth parking stress survey. The exact dates, times and survey extent remain unverified because the separate parking material has still not been identified.

The site visit exposed the weakness in the parking case

At the site visit the Inspector saw only limited spare capacity in the nearby side streets. Pavement parking was also prevalent.

That raised concerns about where additional vehicles might be accommodated and the potential effect on highway and pedestrian safety.

The Inspector also considered the nature of the use. The Local Plan did not provide a separate numerical parking standard for a small HMO, but occupation by up to three independent households was capable of generating a different parking demand from one family occupying the same house.

The point was not that every C4 HMO automatically creates more cars. It was that the appellant needed persuasive site-specific evidence where the location already had poor accessibility and no on-site parking.

What a Lambeth-style survey would have added

Barnet’s Policy TRC03 parking-management note describes the Lambeth parking survey methodology as a widely accepted way of assessing on-street parking.

For residential development, that approach normally looks at a realistic walking catchment of about 200 metres, takes two separate weekday-night snapshots between roughly 00:30 and 05:30, measures usable kerb length, converts that into theoretical parking capacity and counts the vehicles actually parked.

It then calculates parking stress so the council can see the relationship between demand and usable supply. The method can be adapted where local circumstances justify it, and the survey scope should preferably be agreed with the council or highway authority in advance.

Three unquantified observations cannot provide the same evidence because they do not tell the decision-maker how many spaces existed, how many were occupied or whether the streets where residents would really park were included.

The Planning Geek takeaway

This appeal has two useful lessons.

First, an HMO Article 4 Direction only means permission is needed. Applicants still have to satisfy the relevant HMO and housing policies, including criteria dealing with need, location and accessibility.

Second, parking evidence must answer the real planning question. If future occupants are likely to park in nearby side streets, surveying only a main-road frontage can give a misleading picture even if empty kerb can be seen there.

Read the appeal decision 6007883, our guide to Class C4 HMOs and the new Lambeth Parking survey guide.

Created: 10th September 2026