A Bristol HMO appeal has been allowed for a three-person shared home in a former ground-floor office, despite the city council calculating that local HMO concentration would reach 10.05%. The Inspector treated that marginal exceedance as one consideration, not an automatic refusal.
Inspector P J Staddon issued the decision on 23rd September 2026 for a unit at Malago Scholar Quarter, West Street, Bedminster. The case was added to AppealBase on 26th October. Bristol City Council had refused application 26/11228/F for the office-to-HMO conversion.
I would not read the 10% figure as an automatic refusal in isolation. The building was not losing an existing family home, the street was already mixed-use, and the rooms could meet the relevant space standards. The separate application for appeal costs, however, was refused.
Why the Bristol HMO appeal crossed the 10% threshold
Bristol’s 2020 Managing the Development of Houses in Multiple Occupation Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) sets out tests intended to prevent harmful HMO concentrations. One concerns houses sandwiched between HMOs. The other generally looks at a 10% HMO concentration within 100 metres of the proposal.
Using its March 2024 dataset, the council identified 209 properties within 100 metres, including 20 HMOs. That produced a current concentration of 9.57%. Adding the proposed three-person HMO would make 21 properties in HMO use, or approximately 10.05%.
The Bristol HMO appeal was not won by persuading the Inspector that the council’s arithmetic was incorrect. Inspector Staddon accepted that its methodology followed the SPD. Crucially, the SPD describes 10% as the likely tipping point for adverse effects on housing mix and neighbourhood character, not an inflexible prohibition.
Explaining the small excess, the Inspector said the exceedance of the 10% figure is extremely marginal indeed
. The guidance did not say whether such a tiny difference should be rounded down or treated as negligible. That uncertainty did not create a right to permission, but it made the local context especially important.
Former office use made a material difference
The proposed accommodation would occupy a vacant ground-floor commercial unit in a modern building with flats above and behind. Its main frontage faces West Street, a busy route with residential and commercial activities rather than a quiet street of traditional family houses.
In the Bristol HMO appeal, the Inspector stressed that the property had never been a dwelling. The conversion therefore did not remove a house from the local dwelling stock, which the concentration policy aims to protect. It would instead introduce an additional accommodation option.
The appellant reported unsuccessful attempts to secure a commercial occupier. The planned works included three en-suite bedrooms, a shared kitchen and dining room, and changes to the street-facing glazing. The Inspector did not suggest that all vacant commercial premises would be suitable for HMOs.
Taking the building’s history, mixed-use surroundings and marginal concentration figure together, the Inspector found no harmful concentration under development plan policies DM2 and BCS18. Our guide to HMO planning policies explains why locally adopted policies and supplementary guidance need to be read together.
Why the shared kitchen met the room standards
The council’s other concern was the proposed communal kitchen. It measured about 10 square metres, compared with the 13 square metres that the authority initially regarded as the applicable minimum. The point might appear straightforward until the room arrangements are examined.
In this Bristol HMO appeal, the Inspector found that the bedrooms would each be large enough to accommodate a living area for the occupant. On that basis, the relevant kitchen-only standard in the SPD was 5 square metres rather than 13 square metres for a kitchen with other communal living functions.
The 10 square metre room therefore exceeded the applicable minimum. The Inspector concluded that future occupiers would have satisfactory living conditions under policies DM2 and DM30. That was an assessment of this layout, not a ruling that every 10 square metre shared kitchen is acceptable.
Permission was granted subject to the approved plans and a specific maximum of three residents. Those considering similar conversions should check the precise room functions, space standards and any separate HMO licensing obligations. Planning Geek’s HMO bedroom sizes guidance covers the related national and local standards.
Why Bristol City Council did not have to pay appeal costs
Success on the planning merits did not translate into a costs award. The applicant sought a full award, alleging unreasonable reliance on the 10.05% figure, misapplication of space standards and inadequate consideration of the council’s five-year housing land supply.
The Inspector rejected the costs application. The authority had applied relevant policy and justified its concentration assessment, even though the Inspector ultimately reached a different planning judgement. There had also been genuine confusion over the proposed accommodation and kitchen requirements.
Although further discussions might have clarified that kitchen issue, the Inspector considered that a separate disagreement about HMO concentration would have remained. Nor was the housing land supply debate decisive, because permission could be granted in accordance with the development plan.
The Bristol HMO appeal illustrates an important difference: losing an appeal does not automatically mean a council behaved unreasonably or caused unnecessary expense. Both the main appeal decision and the separate costs decision are worth reading before citing the case.
Do not confuse this appeal with another Bristol HMO decision
Planning Geek recently reported a different Bristol HMO appeal involving an eight-person shared house at Filton Avenue. That case, reference 6011341, was decided on 22 October and involved a partial costs award.
The West Street case, reference 6012164, was decided on 23 September and involved a three-person HMO in a former office. Its costs claim was entirely refused. The distinctions are important, particularly for anyone comparing Bristol’s approaches to floorspace, HMO density and alleged unreasonable conduct.
What this HMO threshold decision means for applicants
The practical message is not that Bristol’s 10% threshold can be ignored. The council’s concentration figures and methodology remained relevant, and its SPD carried weight. The Inspector simply declined to treat a 0.05 percentage point excess as decisive where the application added accommodation without taking a dwelling out of ordinary residential use.
Applicants should establish the existing lawful use, check the radius calculation, explain the particular housing mix and demonstrate how the individual rooms will function. Equally, councils need to connect numerical thresholds to the actual harm a proposal would cause, rather than relying on a percentage alone.
The Bristol HMO appeal is a section 78 planning decision on particular facts, not a court judgment or a general relaxation of Bristol’s HMO controls. A similar proposal in a different street, or one involving the loss of an existing dwelling, could reasonably produce a different planning balance.
Inspector’s decision and costs
The official Planning Inspectorate record for appeal 6012164 concerns the decision by Inspector P J Staddon dated 23rd September 2026, including the separate refusal of appeal costs. The quoted words are from the Inspector’s decision, Crown copyright, reproduced under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The appeal decision is also available on AppealBase.
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