The Fant area of Maidstone is one of family housing, however over the last 5 years it has suffered a large scale conversion of family homes into Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) with a negative impact on the area for families. 

There is not an objection to HMOs in general but to inappropriate conversions where there is a lack of amenity space, lack of off street parking, lack of space for bins etc.

Also for HMOs not to adversely impact an area the number needs to be kept as a low % of the total number of homes in an area.  However the amount of HMO conversions is now seriously eroding large parts of Fant.

Permitted Development rights are used to allow these conversions without the need for Planning Permission.  What we want is to restore the democratic deficit by having Maidstone Council imposing an Article 4 direction on the eastern part of the Fant Ward to the East of Hartnup Street and Hackney Road.

We also want planning policies to be updated to enable HMOs to be objected to in areas where there is an over provision of such accommodation.