Appeal to Planning Inspectorate for Greenvale Road House in Multiple Occupation

Several residents have been in touch with us to express their concerns about this development and a retrospective application to convert the house on Greenvale Road to an HMO was rejected by the Council.  However, recently there has been an appeal against the Council’s decision which you may want to comment upon before the deadline of 6^th January 2022.

The original planning application was made in May 2021 to turn 35 Greenvale Road into a 5 bedroom HMO which is divided into 3 double bedrooms and 2 singles.  Spencer advertised the details of the HMO proposal on the Eltham Matters Facebook page while Charlie contacted Greenwich Council to express his concerns and ask for the application to go to a local Planning Committee in the event of approval. The application was rejected by Greenwich Council in July 2021 for two key reasons:

• The shared kitchen is not big enough for so many people to use.  The regulations require a kitchen of at least 14.5 square metres for the 8 people who could live in this house but the development only allows for 10 square metres.
• There are not enough separate toilets and bathrooms in the proposed development for the 8 potential residents.

The full report on the reasons for the rejection of the planning application can be found here:

The planning documents related to this application can be found here.

Spencer met with a group of local residents this week to discuss the appeal and it is quite clear that many concerns remain, not least about whether Eltham will find itself flooded with HMOs if a precedent is established for allowing such large numbers of people to live in Corbett houses like this one. All of the comments received by the Council on the HMO application from earlier in the year will be passed to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate but if you have not commented before or you wish to update your comments in the light of the Council’s decision please do so before 6^th January 2022.

To comment on the appeal, you need to visit the Planning Inspectorate website where the appeal reference is APP/E5330/W/21/3283606. 

Charlie and I intend to deliver a letter to update local residents in the next few days, however, we have had some printer difficulties so it isn’t physically ready yet. A copy is below in case you would like to see what we are saying: