Swindon Borough Council will debate two separate motions at Full Council on Thursday 22 October, both concerned with the growing number of Houses in Multiple Occupation, or HMOs, across the borough, with particular focus on the SN1 area.
The first motion, from Reform UK councillors James Head and Andrew Cripps, points to the council's August 2026 licensing register showing SN1 has the highest concentration of HMOs in Swindon, and calls for a full mapping exercise of every licensed and unlicensed HMO, along with consideration of an Article 4 direction that would require planning permission for future conversions. A second motion, from Labour councillor Paul Dixon, asks the council to review its existing rule that HMOs should not make up more than 20 per cent of properties within a 100 metre radius of any application, and names Broadgreen, Gorse Hill, Kingshill, Queen's Park and Rodbourne Ferndale and Western as areas where tighter controls might be needed. A council spokesperson said the administration recognised the concerns and that the emerging Local Plan would aim to prevent what was described as over densification.
The mapping exercise is expected to take some months, largely because nobody currently knows how many houses in Swindon contain more people than the owner originally intended, a category that council officers admit may also include several of their own meeting rooms.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had done her own survey of her street using a biro and the back of a Radio Times. 'I'm not one to gossip,' she said, 'but number nine has had seven different cars parked outside it this week and I've never once seen the same face twice. In my day a house had a family in it, not a rota.'
Officials confirmed that under the 20 per cent threshold rule, a street could in theory reach the limit, add one more converted semi, and technically become what the council's own paperwork calls an area of concern, a phrase several residents felt could also describe most of SN1 on a Friday night regardless of housing policy.
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the proposed Article 4 direction had given him a new way of describing his own arrangement whereby three colleagues now sleep in the stock room ahead of early deliveries. 'We don't call it an HMO,' he said. 'We call it a flexible overnight solutions hub. Julie's got a lovely little set up behind the A4 reams. It's about density done properly, not just cramming people in.'
Should the Article 4 direction go ahead, planning permission would be required for any further conversions in the affected areas, meaning landlords would need to prove their proposed six bedroom house share enhances rather than subtracts from the character of a neighbourhood, a test the council has not yet explained how to mark.
The motions will be debated on Thursday. SN1, which did not ask to become a case study, declined to comment, on the grounds that it currently has no spare room to hold a press conference in.