A Bath Labour candidate has raised concerns following the release of figures that revealed 87% of Houses of Multiple Occupancies (HMOs) in Bath were not up to the required standard.
Rachel Willis, who is Labour’s candidate in Oldfield ward, called on the council to work together with the University of Bath and Bath Spa University to make sure that students have a proper means of communication to highlight substandard housing.
She also stressed that it was important for universities to meet rising student numbers with building more accommodation on campus, rather than relying on Bath’s depleting brownfield availability in order to avoid further backlogs in social housing waiting lists.
Speaking to the council’s Housing and Major Projects Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel, Rachel said: “I find it deeply concerning that 87% of the properties inspected fell below the required standard.
“Not only is living in substandard housing worrying for tenants, but it can be detrimental to health and wellbeing and highlights insecurities within housing”.
“Students make an extremely important contribution to our local economy, spending money in the shops and bringing new visitors to our city.
“But as student numbers increase, we need to make sure that the university are accepting some responsibility by building more halls of residence on their campuses rather than relying on Bath’s slim brownfield availability”.
“With 5,000 people in the social housing waiting list, we need to make sure that we are providing the space for families to live in and not just students.
“This will also ensure that students who want to stay in our wonderful city once completing their studies also have spaces to live”.
