A Liverpool HMO appeal concerning seven bedrooms has been dismissed even though the Inspector said the proposed accommodation appeared to meet the relevant minimum space standards.
Appeal 6010552, at 5 St Marys Road in Garston, is a useful reminder that minimum figures are not the whole planning assessment. The Inspector still found the layout cramped and awkward for seven people and gave particular weight to the lack of safe and secure external amenity space.
The appeal also contains a second practical lesson: a substantive problem cannot always be repaired during an appeal by sending in materially different plans after the council and interested parties have considered the original scheme.
What was proposed at 5 St Marys Road?
The application, reference 25F/1821, concerned an extension and the conversion of the upper floors of a commercial property to a seven-bedroom HMO.
The appeal heading described the proposal as a change from two apartments. However, the Inspector also recorded that an earlier permission for two flats appeared never to have been implemented and that the upper floors had been vacant for more than 20 years. It would therefore be misleading to describe two occupied flats as the existing lawful situation.
The original application had proposed an eight-bedroom HMO before being reduced to seven bedrooms.
Inspector Les Greenwood dismissed the appeal on 18th September 2026.
The minimum figures appeared to be met
Liverpool Local Plan Policy H10 requires HMO accommodation to provide a satisfactory internal configuration and appropriate amenity for future occupiers. It also requires safe and secure external amenity space with access to a yard or garden.
The Inspector considered the internal layout against the relevant standards. The decision letter does not reproduce the dimensions of each individual bedroom, so Planning Geek has not invented a room-size schedule that the primary document does not contain.
What the decision does say is important: the configuration appeared to be in line with the minimum standards. Even so, the Inspector considered that it would provide cramped and awkward accommodation for seven people.
That is the planning lesson. A numerical minimum is a floor. It is not necessarily the complete assessment of whether the resulting home will provide acceptable living conditions.
Our guide to HMO minimum bedroom sizes explains the separate licensing minimums and why planning standards still need to be checked independently.
How the accommodation would work still mattered
The Inspector looked at the practical use of the accommodation as a whole rather than treating each room as a box on a spreadsheet.
The scheme provided seven bedrooms, two shower rooms, a kitchen and dining area, a living area and circulation space. The overall arrangement was nevertheless considered relatively poor for the intensity of occupation proposed.
That approach is consistent with the recent Enfield HMO appeal at Lytton Avenue, where adequate overall floorspace did not compensate for deficient communal accommodation. Liverpool adds a slightly different point: even where the numerical minimums appear to be met, the Inspector can still ask whether the plan works as a home for the number of people proposed.
No external amenity space was shown on the scheme before the council
The plans determined by Liverpool City Council did not provide external amenity space for HMO occupiers. The Inspector considered that this deficiency made the shortcomings of the internal accommodation more serious.
No convincing evidence was provided that suitable public open space nearby would substitute for the private external space required by Policy H10.
The proposal therefore failed to provide the quality of living environment required by the development plan.
The appellant tried to add a yard at appeal stage
Revised drawings were submitted during the appeal. Part of the flat-roofed rear extension would have been demolished to create an external yard. The drawings also corrected a discrepancy concerning side windows.
The Inspector treated the window correction as minor, but the proposed yard was different. It changed the amount and quality of amenity space and raised questions about access, security and the relationship with the ground-floor commercial use.
The council and interested parties had not had the opportunity to consider that materially revised arrangement. The Inspector therefore determined the appeal on the scheme that had been before the council.
The reasoning reflects the familiar fairness principle associated with Wheatcroft, although the Inspector did not cite that case by name. The practical point is enough: appeal-stage amendments are not automatically accepted merely because they are intended to solve a refusal reason.
What about the permission for two flats?
The earlier planning permission for two flats was relied upon as a fallback. The Inspector gave it limited weight.
A seven-person HMO would be a materially more intensive form of occupation than two flats, and the earlier permission did not demonstrate that the living conditions of the HMO itself would be acceptable. The fallback therefore did not overcome the shortcomings of the proposal before the Inspector.
The wider HMO lesson
Applicants should avoid treating minimum room figures as a substitute for a proper living-conditions assessment. Depending on the policy and the scheme, the decision-maker may still need to consider:
- Whether bedrooms and communal rooms are practically usable
- How circulation works at the proposed intensity of occupation
- Whether daylight, outlook and ventilation are acceptable
- The quantity and quality of communal accommodation
- Safe and secure external amenity space
- The overall quality of the living environment
A technically compliant room schedule can still sit inside a poor plan.
Read the full Liverpool HMO appeal decision hosted by Planning Geek.
0 Comments