COUNCILLORS will visit a property in Llanelli which a company wants to turn into a house of multiple occupation (HMO) despite being warned they might lose control of the decision-making process.
A majority of Carmarthenshire Council’s planning committee voted in favour of the site visit – a move described the committee’s chairman as being “without a basis at all”.
Planning officers had recommended the HMO application for the detached four-bed property on Llwynhendy Road for approval, and set out their position on 19 objections to the proposal in a committee report.
Officers said the objections on grounds including impact on the area’s character, safety, parking and other issues including an absence of information about occupants and over-intensive use of the property as a seven-bed HMO lacked objective evidence of harm and were predominantly speculative.
Speaking at the meeting planning officer John Thomas said: “We are here to deal with the planning aspects not the character of those occupants.”
Mr Thomas said there had been three recent cases of the committee turning down HMO applications against officer advice that had led to appeals which were in turn upheld, with costs awarded against the council on more than one occasion.
Ward councillor Michelle Donoghue addressed the committee to say photos shown at the meeting of Llwynhendy Road didn’t show the true level of congestion. She then asked for a site visit, which committee member Cllr Edward Skinner put forward as a proposal.
After the proposal was seconded Mr Thomas said the council might not be able to make a decision in time and ran the risk of the applicants, Stoke Park Properties, potentially submitting an appeal to the Welsh Government on the grounds of non-determination. And that, he said, also ran the risk of costs.
Cllr Russell Sparks said he wanted a decision to be made on the application at the meeting rather than going on a site visit.
A majority of the committee voted in favour of visiting the property, prompting chairman Cllr Tyssul Evans to say: “Sadly there will be a site visit, without a basis at all, but that is the decision of the committee.”
Cllr Dorian Phillips said both ward members had come to address the committee and that there was a lot of opposition to the plans which councillors had to take seriously.
“If these things were happening on your doorstep how would you feel about that?” he said.
Cllr Evans said he’d lived next to an HMO for a decade and seen “very little issues”.
