Plans have been submitted to turn land behind a beauty salon into a house in multiple occupation (HMO), in a town that has experienced a raft of family homes being converted. Developers want to put a four-storey HMO on the land behind Doo-Das hair and beauty in Bank Street, Maidstone . A HMO typically contains a number of lockable single bedrooms, usually with ensuite facilities, with the building’s residents sharing a kitchen and communal area.
The proposed scheme would provide five bedsits alongside a communal kitchen, roof top garden, and refuse, recycling and cycle storage. In the design and access statement from the applicant, Holbrook LLP, it says it would “provide purpose-built accommodation for single persons with communal facilities, in a sustainable location”. Currently the 42.
63 sq m land is an unused brownfield site, which provides bin storage for the existing flats at Holbrook House. Maidstone currently has no specific planning policies on the creation of HMOs that would enable it to exercise control, a fact bemoaned by the Cllr Clive English, when he was the leader of the Lib Dem opposition to Maidstone council, back in March. Frustrated at the council’s inability to exercise any control over HMO applications, Cllr English (Lib Dem) said then: “We need to get a grip on this issue once and for all and commission the work to get the evidence of parking pressure in these areas so that we can finally put policies in place to prevent inappropriate developme.
