The Isle of Wight Council has been criticised for allowing too many houses of multiple occupancies (HMOs) so close together, with Sandown being a hotspot.
Sandown Town Council has agreed to write to the Isle of Wight Council questioning its lack of management of where licensed HMOs are placed.
It follows the opening of a facility on Avenue Road in the town by Two Saints, the council’s commissioned accommodation provider on the homelessness pathway. The Isle of Wight Council claims it does not qualify as an HMO.
Island Echo first broke the news of the HMO on avenue road back in early October after internal work began on a block of flats to turn it into an HMO. Residents of the local area were angry at the building works being undertaken without their consultation, but as they were internalised works permission from the community wasn’t needed to proceed with plans.
The town council is seeking clarification on that point.
Speaking at a town council meeting on Monday, mayor Councillor Paddy Lightfoot said the facility ticked the boxes of an HMO as determined by the government, and yet the Isle of Wight Council was saying it was not one. At a meeting held earlier in the month between Two Saints, Sandown Town Council, the Isle of Wight Council and residents, it was said the facility was 2 units, with the capacity for 4 people in 1 and 5 in the other, so it did not to be licensed as an HMO.
Cllr Lightfoot said there was a lot of unrest and ill feeling about the whole situation and a lot of residents had contacted him after the meeting to say they were still not happy and he would like the IW council to explain the difference.
He said:
“We hope the facility won’t be a problem and I think a lot of the anger is displaced from behaviour at other HMOs, which comes back to should the IW council be managing where HMOs are placed.”
From a Freedom of Information request submitted by Cllr Lightfoot, figures show Sandown and Shanklin has 23% of the licensed HMOs on the Island. All of Sandown’s HMOs, Cllr Lightfoot said, are within a 350m radius.
Sandown Town Council said Two Saints had agreed to come back and speak to residents and the authority.
Seems as though its only the sandown council that has the problem, probably trying to justify their expenses for another meeting, bet it was well heated
Best to keep all nere do wells in the same area
For as we see with the failed policy of builders having to provide social housing on every new site, by spreading the crime, anti social behaviour, drugs and swarms of feral children far and wide, this makes Policing far more difficult.
And it spreads the misery to all
Far better to keep them contained and IF they have earnt respect then and only THEN give them better areas in which to live.
News for you, chum.
I’m one of those “nere do wells”. Its got nothing to do with “respect”. All that matters is money, and I now have plenty.
I might even be living next door.
Quite right -all about money- if an HMO is set up then those that live around it with cash, move out, as they do not wish to live in an area that has suddenly been downgraded. What you then find is that the area is permanently downgraded and more people without any money gravitate into that area.
this will neatly polarise society further – the haves in their area and the have nots in theirs.
the successful always distance themselves from the failures – it is one of lifes truisms and no amount of hand wringing, do gooding is going to change that.
Make no mistake. I’m still scum. I’m proud of where I came from.
Moving out of bedsitland has nothing to do with distancing myself from failures. I’m still the same person I was when I was poor scum.
The real failures are people like WPTE who work all their lives for crap wages and retire on a crap pension. They’re all twisted about how crap their lives are with and the only people they can look down on are poor scum because everyone else, and rich scum like me, looks down on them.
There is no legal way out of the gutter. You can’t get a job because you have a record (mine was for using). So I made money the only way I could. Tax free. I’m now rich scum. I live where I want and there’s nothing losers like WPTE can do about it.
Proud of ruining other peoples lifes. Would really like a study on people like you to see why..is it imaginary or real power over others like rapists and pedophiles do it for..maybe you are also one of those and women beater and a host of other things. All things that improve you own low self esteem..or maybe you wear expensive suits or trainers and drive a expensive car nowadays..would honestly like to know tho.
Touched a raw nerve did he?
I bought and sold stuff.
Odd that you latch onto violence against women and kids as crimes you think of first
Close to home is it?
“Far better to keep them contained”.
Keeping people you think are inferior confined to their own segregated communities?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_ghettos
Or you could offer a room ssint smiffy
As if this was a new thing. Sandown and Shanklin have always had tons of HMOs, though we used to call them bedsits when I had one in the 1980s.
Always had the same problems with drugs and petty crime too. It’s nothing new.
I bet the only thing that is new are the people complaining about the problem. Thought Sandown was going to be this lovely retirement haven did you? News for you, it has, and always has had, a large poor underclass living in grotty bedsits, getting drunk and doing drugs.
I have seen this type of problem expanding in other towns and cities. Some of these occupant’s need help, some want it some don’t. What normally happens, is that with the intro duction of these people into a small area, the local residents start to move out, thats if they can. That can leave more unattractive empty properties that the council can buy cheaply, and guess what they will be tempted to do, Turn them into HMOs.
What to do about these unfortunate people who are homeless. I have absolutely no idea.
Not just Sandown bending the rules. Check out the current doss development being applied for in Shanklin that was reported on Island Echo. Some old hair salon and five flats being crammed into it. No light, no ventilation, no outside space. Absolutely awful for the locals. And an HMO applied for there too.
These places need to be built near top councillors or one of the MP’s homes or the higher ranking Police houses
See how long the growing group of our own and imported dregs of society are tolerated then
Of course, as with low end newcomers such top people will never live, travel, socialise, be treated or mix in any way with them.
IF they ever did, for a publicity exercise it would be from carefully chosen, well vetted ones to ‘show’ the public are making a fuss over nothing
Most of us know different.
So don’t accept it without expressing your anger to such
Get over yourself gran.
When the choice is an HMO or the street, an HMO seems like a ruddy palace.
But you didn’t mean it was awful for the people living there, did ya? You ment it was awful for the people who have to see them.
How strange. I emailed a letter of complaint to the Isle of Wight Council regarding this latest HMO in Avenue Road. I received an email back from them stating, ‘they have no control over where HMOs are located’!!!!!!
Which of course they do. Sandown have too many in my opinion. The rest of the island should take their fair share. Why should Sandown be overun with them. I feel for decent homeless people. What I don’t like and I think I speak for many, are the drug and alcohol dependant residents who cause trouble in the Town. Why always Sandown?
Why always sandown? It’s cause it’s a hell hole, why an earth would we want all the scag head junkie wasters in nice towns else where on the island? Personally I’d give them a couple of chances to sort there lives out and be part of a community again and if not ship them off to Ukraine! Waste of oxygen the majority of them!
Hear hear!
Get rid of the lot of em, wastes of tax payers money!
That would also include MP Michael Gove (he loves his Charlie), as of course does Davis Warburton . Rory Stewart we know dabbles in Opium. Where as Victoria Atkins’s hubby of course runs a ganja farm. And not forgetting Adam Afriyie’s company distributes it.
If there was decent housing, jobs that actually paid wages, and proper health and social support for people, right from education upwards, the people who are referred to as ” scum” would be far fewer. For the last 12 years, mist services have been exhausted. Housing has become a luxury a lot of people can’t afford, even at bedsit level.
Unless there is some form of investment in people, and housing law reform, this will get more frequent.
So instead of pointing the finger, ask yourself why you’re calling people scum, and look at the bigger picture.
perhaps you should realise that the house prices/rents wouldn’t be so high if the council didn’t encourage taxpayer funded, benefit claimants to move to the island, as well as the creeping, upward number of economic immigrants showing up on the island. Ever noticed the steady increase in the number of people in the supermarkets that look absolutely lost, don’t speak english and look totally out of place.
as for social support – perhaps people should learn to stand on their own two feet, be independent and not be so weak and pathetic that they need cradle to grave help.
instead of encouraging state sponging dependencies -the council should actively discourage it.
Dole scum best kept together
The word scum is bandied about so much on these pages, some may even warrant the description (not forgetting the rampaging hoards of “feral” children pillaging around every corner of the island of course, who could), although you are talking about humans beings. Others do not deserve the description. But one thing is sure the “people” that bandy round the term indiscriminately, are scum, just a different sort, not much to choose between them. Who has the darkest heart.