Leicester City Council
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Latest property news
Leicester council consults on huge new HMO control scheme
City is seeking property industry views on vast increase of its powers to control HMO developments within the East Midlands city.
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Latest property news
Leicester begins banning To Let boards outside student properties
Leicester is the latest city to go live with a scheme that requires letting agents to apply for planning permission to erect boards in areas heavily dominated by students. The council yesterday revealed that it is to start implementing new powers granted to it by the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government (DHCLG) to ban To Let boards in half a dozen areas in and around the University of Leicester and De Montford University. Under the Regulation 7 Direction order landlords or agents must now apply for planning consent to put up signs advertising a property and, if they don’t, will be fined up to £2,500. The areas affected are the Windermere, Hazel, Clarendon Park (pictured, above), Greenhill, West End, Ashleigh Road and West End conservation parts of the city. The ban follows a decade-long attempt to control boards in these areas through a voluntary code of practice but, the council says, only a ‘handful’ of landlords and agents have complied with this. To let boards The council was moved to apply for a Regulation 7 Direction order after locals in these areas complained of an almost constant flurry of boards outside properties. “They are intrusive and often misleading,…
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Latest property news
Government consults on Leicester To Let board ban in student areas
The government is consulting the citizens of Leicester on whether to enable their local authority to gain formal control of To Let boards in four key student roads surrounding its two universities. This will, in effect, introduce a To Let board ban in these areas. Earlier this year the council applied to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to introduce formal controls for To Let boards and, after the consultation is over, a decision will be made. The bid by Leicester City Council under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations comes after a voluntary code of conduct introduced three years ago failed to control the large number of boards visible in these areas “for large parts of the year – almost permanently”, the council says. The voluntary code followed local concerns about the number of boards used by agents in the city’s highly competitive central rental market, which is dominated by Leicester’s 40,000 students. The city ran a consultation last year which received 238 replies, 88 from local landlords opposing the measure, although 96 people requested an outright band. A quick stroll down one of the main student roads in the city, Clarendon Street, reveals 21…
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