Sheffield City Council v Barnes (1995)
Graeme and Carole Barnes, two Yorkshire landlords rented out a two-storey house in Sheffield to students. The house was normally rented to four or five students sharing as a group.Sheffield City Council had decided it was effectively a collection of flatlets so was a house in multiple occupancy, and served a notice requiring alterations to the house in May 1992. Mr & Mrs Barnes subsequently complied with some but argued that others (including expensive alterations to meet safety regulations) were unnecessary.
HELD: A court judge and the Court of Appeal dismissed the Council’s appeal, agreeing that the occupants formed a single group as they had come to the house as one group and, except in one case, had joint tenancies. Mr and Mrs Barnes would only let to a group, not to individuals. The occupants shared facilities including the sitting room; they were responsible for the whole house, not just their own rooms; and individual rooms did not have locks on the doors. The tenants were responsible for the filling of vacancies when they arose and also the allocation of rooms.
The Judge referred to nine factors which may be helpful in determining whether a house is an HMO:
1) Origin of the tenancy (whether the tenants came to the house together as a group, or whether they were independantly recruited by the landlord or agent) p>
3) Extent of the tenants’ occupation (whether the tenants are responsible for the whole house, or whether the responsibility for these common parts remains with the landlord)
4) Whether the bedrooms are locked (the greater the extent of the tenants’ ability to lock their doors and keep everybody else out, the less communal the occupation)
5) Responsibility for filling vacancies (if it is up to the tenants to do this then it is more suggestive of a single household, but indicates individual occupiers if the landlord is responsible for this)
6) Allocation of rooms (if the landlord lets a particular room to a particular tenant, it looks more like an independent letting that a single household)
8) Stability of the groupof tenants (continuity and the extent to which it is in continuous residence without chopping and changing of personel)
9) The mode of living (how the cooking is done, how the eating is done, who does the shopping, who is responsible for cleaning.) This factor was said to be of relatively little importance, and was said to have been exaggerated by the Council.