by It’s 6pm on a Wednesday evening and the Holt Road Residents’ Association have gathered at their local pub in Kensington.
Among them are people who have lived in the area all their lives – but it is a life different from what they remember in their childhood. In many cases the terraced houses which used to be full of families have been bought by landlords and converted into houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) for as many students and tenants as possible.
Residents feel this has created a transient community that does not have a vested interest in the area and care for it. In June 2021, Liverpool City Council introduced a change known as an Article 4 directive, making such conversions more difficult.
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The Article 4 directive means that planning permission must now be obtained in certain parts of the city – including this one – to convert a property into an HMO for three or more people. Another change to the council’s local plan means that planning permission can now be refused when there are more than 10% of HMOs in a given area.
These measures have been welcomed in areas like Kensington but when it comes to the number of HMOs, many feel the damage has already been done. Residents also fear that landlords are finding new ways to get around the regulations and are transferring properties without planning permission.
The ECHO sat down with Holt Road Residents’ Association this week, which was formed in 2018 with the aim of trying to Kensington a better place for everyone to live and work.
“If I was younger I would sell my house and go. I’m 80 now – where am I going to go?”
Growing up in Kensington back in 1947, Agnes Dickinson said: “It was a rich area around here, it was a community. You knew all your neighbours.”
But today, Agnes, 77, said: “There are 36 houses on our street and you have five family houses”, and the rest have been transferred to HMOs. Like Agnes, Anne Hammel always called the area home.
Anne recalls: “Everyone wanted to live around here for the simple reason that we had many, many factories on Edge Lane. People bought the houses or rented the houses so they could work in the factories.
“Gradually the factories started to close and people moved out. Housing associations moved in and started buying houses.
“Then you got the landlords who wanted to turn them into HMOs. We have a lot of absentee landlords. For some houses they can’t find the landlords and they sit empty.
“If I was younger I would sell my house and go. I’m 80 now – where do I go? How do I get a mortgage?”
“We don’t have to live like this”
The ECHO has regularly reported on the issues caused by HMOs in areas such as Kensington – including litter, illegal dumping, parking problems and anti-social behaviour. Dave Rimmer, 63, told the ECHO: “We started this [residents association] in 2018, we said ‘we don’t have to live like this.’
“We had a meeting with the council and what they promised was amazing. They changed the footpaths, they took the rubbish out, they put a flag back all over. The footpaths are brilliant.
“They then said that they would give us these Euro bins on a temporary basis and after that we would get underground bins. The Euro bins will be cleaned regularly, disinfected, the streets will be clean and rat free.
“It was rat-free for a few months – there were no rats around. Everyone was happy, they were cleaning the streets. The street sweepers were around all the time. Then for the last two or three years it’s reduced again.”
Community bins, also known as Euro bins, were introduced in areas such as Kensington in 2020, as part of the city council’s £6m regeneration scheme. This has led to the removal of wheelie bins from a number of secondary streets across the city and the replacement of large container bins to rejuvenate dirty and pest-ridden pavements, and to increase recycling.
When the Euro bins were first introduced, Dave said: “People were using the bins properly but now they are leaving bags of food by the bin instead of putting it in.” Although the bins are emptied regularly, Dave said they are not cleaned inside or out, which attracts vermin.
Photographs taken in Kensington in recent weeks show streets littered with rubbish and burnt-out community incinerators with illegally disposed items piled up next to them. Anne-Marie Savage, 54, said: “We get people driving into the area illegally dumping in the area and driving away – that’s how bad it is.”
The Holt Road Residents’ Association also believes that the level of street cleaning is insufficient to deal with the amount of waste being dumped in the area. Liverpool City Council leader Liam Robinson told the ECHO: “I can completely understand the frustration of the residents, they are a really close-knit community.
“I have been very clear with the council’s planning department since I came forward that enforcement against HMOs is now a priority for planning enforcement.”
Councilor Robinson spoke of the “greed of some landlords” who “do not affect the quality of the property, they have no qualms about how they look after the tenants and the residents, there is nothing they are worried about at worry them). sums of money for traditionally three- or four-bedroom terraced houses.”
He said: “We have to keep fighting but we also have to look at what additional powers we need to ask for. [from the government] to be able to continue fighting.”
Underground super bins and what the future holds
Councilor Robinson said he wants to improve the quality of street cleaning throughout the city. This includes cleaning out the Euro bins, which is expected to be done in the coming months, with money allocated from the city council’s budget for this year.
Councilor Robinson said: “I think it’s certainly fair to say that when the Euro bins first came in, there was a huge improvement on what I called the rat-fest of collecting on the pavements. It’s certainly the paths are much clearer than they used to be and we have noticed that the vermin reports have decreased from what they were a few years ago – that is not to say that the issue of rats is not still there. area.
“We are as concerned as residents were about the need to have a proper focus on the Euro bins.”
The city council is also looking to install CCTV cameras at the worst illegal dumping locations in the area. In 2022, the city council’s first underground super bins were installed at 12 locations across the city including two streets in Kensington.
The £1.5m scheme aimed to clean up communities and tackle dumping and vermin problems in hundreds of city center streets, which do not have space for wheelie bins. However, Holt Road Residents’ Association says many streets in Kensington that were promised underground bins as part of the roll-out are yet to receive them.
Asked for an update on the rollout this week, Councilor Robinson said there would be a review in the coming months on how Euro bins and underground bins have worked across the city and what’s next.
He added that while underground bins have been largely successful, they do present some logistical challenges in terms of where they can be installed due to things like sewers and gas pipes that sit below street level. .
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