A seven-person HMO has been allowed at 9 The Spinney, Winchmore Hill, less than 13 months after a previous Inspector dismissed a larger scheme at exactly the same house.
The latest Inspector rejected the idea that a first-floor room with its own kitchenette should be treated as a separate dwelling, gave little weight to Enfield’s use of the Nationally Described Space Standard for that individual room, and found insufficient evidence that increasing the HMO from five to seven residents would cause unacceptable noise or disturbance.
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From a five-person C4 HMO to seven people
No. 9 is a generously sized two-storey semi-detached house in a quiet suburban street. It already had planning permission, reference 23/00259/FUL, for a five-person Class C4 HMO.
The new application, 25/02531/FUL, sought planning permission for a change of use from that C4 use to a larger sui generis HMO for seven people. The scheme has six letting rooms in total, with one first-floor room fitted with an en-suite shower and kitchenette.
Enfield’s decision notice refused the application on 21 October 2025. The council gave two reasons: it considered the first-floor bedsit/studio substandard because of its limited floorspace, and considered the resulting HMO over-intensive because of the increase in occupants and associated movements affecting residential character and amenity.
That occupancy point matters. Class C4 normally covers a small HMO occupied by between three and six people as their only or main residence, where they share basic amenities. Once the intended occupation reaches seven, the use generally falls outside C4 and requires consideration as a sui generis HMO.
Planning Geek’s guides to HMO bedroom sizes and planning and Use Class C4 explain the distinction in more detail.
A kitchenette did not make a separate flat
Enfield’s officer report had used terms including “bedsit/flat” for the additional room, while the application description itself referred to a “self-contained letting room”.
Inspector Andrew Boughton was careful about what that meant in planning terms. The room had cooking facilities, but it sat on the upper floor, had no separate direct access from the street and remained connected to the rest of the house.
Its occupier could use the shared kitchen, dining room, common circulation and outdoor amenity space. The Inspector therefore found that the proposal did not create a separate planning unit.
In other words, “self-contained” in the description did not turn the room into a self-contained flat. It remained a letting room within one larger HMO.
Why Enfield’s NDSS argument carried little weight
The council assessed the additional room as having about 10.3 sq m of floorspace and referred to the Nationally Described Space Standard for new dwellings when arguing that the accommodation represented over-intensification.
The Inspector did not turn that into a sweeping rule that the NDSS can never be relevant to an HMO. His reasoning was much more fact-specific.
Because the room could not be occupied separately from the rest of No. 9, he considered it inappropriate to apply space standards intended for a new dwelling to that single room. He also said that, even if the NDSS were applied at room level, it would not be appropriate to deduct fittings and storage such as wardrobes in the way the council appeared to have done.
Looking at the property as a whole, the house appeared to exceed the 132 sq m NDSS minimum for a two-storey, six-bedroom, eight-person dwelling. The Inspector found the subject room well lit, with a good outlook, a wardrobe, double bed and desk area, and of a good size for up to two people within the shared HMO.
The shared facilities mattered
The other five bedrooms were supported by shared facilities including a ground-floor kitchen and dining room, outdoor amenity space, bathrooms and a separate shower/WC. Four of the six bedrooms would have en-suites, including the room with the kitchenette.
The Inspector also noted a good-sized ground-floor room shown as an additional kitchen-dining room. Taken together, he considered the HMO to provide a good level of accommodation for seven residents.
That is a useful planning point. The quality of an HMO cannot always be judged by lifting a minimum figure designed for a separate dwelling and applying it to one bedroom in isolation. The actual planning unit, access to shared rooms and the overall living environment all matter.
What about neighbours and HMO concentration?
The Spinney is a quiet street of substantial houses, and the Inspector accepted that character is about more than appearance. But he also observed that No. 9 was well maintained, had one front-door entrance and was visually indistinguishable from neighbouring homes.
There was no suggestion of a cluster of other HMOs nearby. More importantly, the Inspector found no robust evidence that increasing occupation from five people to seven would create an unacceptable level of noise and disturbance.
Parking did not tip the balance either. Enfield’s transport officers had not objected, on-street spaces were available during the site visit and objectors themselves acknowledged that there was no technical evidence demonstrating a parking problem. A condition requires long-stay cycle parking.
Why did the previous appeal fail?
The earlier appeal, APP/Q5300/W/25/3360248, was dismissed on 6 August 2025. That scheme proposed two self-contained HMO studios alongside the five-person HMO and could have resulted in up to eight occupiers.
Interestingly, the earlier Inspector reached a similar conclusion on the accommodation itself. The two studio rooms were not separate planning units, and he assessed the total floorspace of the house against the NDSS rather than treating each studio as a separate one-person dwelling. He found the living conditions acceptable.
That appeal failed for a different reason: the Inspector gave great weight to the additional comings and goings, noise and disturbance associated with the larger use. He had objections before him which post-dated the intensified occupation and found harm to neighbours and the character of the quiet street.
The new Inspector was not simply contradicting the old one
The 2026 proposal was narrower. Instead of two additional studio-style rooms and potential occupation by eight people, the appeal before Inspector Boughton involved one additional letting room and a hard cap of seven residents.
He expressly considered the previous decision. On the evidence before him, he attached much less weight to the likelihood of extra disturbance and concluded that the revised proposal would not harm residential character or neighbours’ living conditions.
That is ordinary planning judgment rather than two Inspectors applying different legal rules to the same scheme. The proposal, occupancy and evidential picture were different. It is also a useful reminder that planning appeals turn on the scheme and evidence actually before the Inspector.
The appeal was allowed with two conditions
The appeal decision, reference 6008361, was allowed on 28 August 2026.
Occupation is limited to no more than seven people using the property as their sole or main residence. A long-stay cycle-parking scheme must also be approved and installed within six months.
For practitioners, the useful lesson is not that seven-person HMOs are automatically acceptable or that the NDSS is irrelevant. It is that councils still need to show why the actual increase in occupation causes planning harm, and the correct planning unit and shared facilities matter when assessing the quality of HMO accommodation.
