Petition to: Implement Article 4 Direction so that planning permission is required for any future developments of HMO's in Englefield Green and Egham

Petition update from the council, 17 February 2021

This is automatically sent to all the people that signed the petition electronically. There were 26 confirmed signatories (23 online and 3 offline) which does not meet the threshold of 50 under our Petitions scheme to be considered more than as normal correspondence. The response follows:
"Thank you for your email. I have considered your petition, unfortunately I am not minded currently to go down a route towards an article 4 for this part of the Borough at this time. This is for a number of reasons, firstly the Council does not have evidence at this time that this kind of intervention is required. Secondly an article 4 would simply require the submission of a planning application, Runnymede does not have current local plan policies that are likely to lead to the refusal of HMOs and as such it is unlikely that requiring the submission of planning applications would achieve the outcome you desire. Finally Central Government has recently indicated in a consultation document that Article 4 powers should be used less frequently in the future. For these reasons I am not intending to advance this proposal at this time".


Further information

Ashley Smith, MRTPI
Corporate Head of Development Management & Building Control
Runnymede Borough Council
Tel 01932 838383