It’s 6pm on a Wednesday evening and the Holt Road Residents’ Association has met at their local pub in Kensington.
Among them there are people who have lived in this region all their lives; but this is very different from how they remember the place during their childhood. Terraced houses, once full of families, have in many cases been bought by landlords and converted into multiple occupations (HMOs) for as many students and tenants as possible.
Residents feel this has created a temporary community that cares about the area and has no interest in it. In June 2021, Liverpool City Council introduced a change called an Article 4 order that makes such conversions even more difficult.
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Clause 4 instructions mean that planning permission must now be obtained for the conversion of a property into an HMO for three or more people in certain areas of the city (including this area). Another change under the council’s local plan means planning permission can now be refused if there is more than a 10% concentration of HMOs in a particular area.
These measures have been welcomed in areas such as Kensington, but when it comes to the number of HMOs, many feel the damage has already been done. Residents also fear homeowners will find new ways to get around regulations and convert properties without obtaining planning permission.
This week the ECHO spoke to the Holt Road Residents Association, which was formed in 2018. Kensington A better place for everyone to live and work.
“If I were younger, I would sell my house and leave. Now I am 80 years old, where will I go?”
Agnes Dickinson, who grew up in Kensington in 1947, said: “It was an affluent area, a community. You knew all your neighbours.”
But today Agnes, 77, said: “There are 36 houses on our street and you have five family homes,” with the rest converted to HMOs. Like Agnes, Anne Hammel always called the area home.
“Everyone wanted to live here for the simple reason that we had lots of factories on Edge Lane,” recalls Anne. “People bought or rented houses so they could work in the factories.
“Slowly, factories started to close, people started to move out. Housing associations also started to come and buy houses.
“There are landlords who want to turn them into HMOs. We have a lot of homeless landlords. “Some of the houses are sitting empty after the landlords have tracked them down.
“If I were young, I would sell my house and leave. Now I am 80 years old, where will I go? How will I get a mortgage?”
“We don’t have to live like this”
The ECHO has regularly reported on the problems HMOs create in areas such as Kensington, such as litter, fly tipping, 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 their commitment was great. They rebuilt the byways, took out the rubbish, re-marked it all. “The byways are fantastic.
“Then they said that they would give us these Euro bins temporarily, and then we would get the underground bins. The Euro bins will be cleaned and disinfected regularly, the streets will be cleaned and cleared of rats.
“For a few months there were no rats; there were no rats around. Everybody was happy, they were cleaning the streets. The street sweepers were always around. Then in the last two or three years it’s gone down again.”
Community bins, also known as Euro bins, were introduced in areas such as Kensington in 2020 as part of the city council’s £6 million alley regeneration plan. This has seen wheelie bins removed from some terraced streets in the city and replaced with large container bins to rejuvenate dirty and pest-infested alleyways and increase recycling.
When Euro bins were first introduced, Dave said: “People used to use the bins properly but now they leave food bags next to the bin instead of putting them in the bin.” Dave said that although the bins were emptied regularly, they were not cleaned inside and out, which attracted pests.
Photos taken in Kensington in recent weeks show streets littered with rubbish and communal burns littered with fly-tipped items. Anne-Marie Savage, 54, said: “We’re getting people coming into the area flying around the area and moving away – that’s how bad it is.”
The Holt Road Residents Association also believes the level of street cleaning is not sufficient to tackle the amount of waste dumped in the area. Liverpool City Council leader Liam Robinson told the ECHO: “I can completely understand residents’ frustration, they are a truly wonderful, close-knit community.
“Since becoming leader I have been very clear with the council’s planning department that enforcement against HMOs is the priority of planning enforcement at the moment.”
Cllr Robinson spoke of the greed of a number of landlords who “are not bothered by the quality of the property, not bothered by how they look after tenants or residents, their only concern is making big money on traditionally three- to four-bedroom terrace houses.”
He added: “We have to keep fighting but we also have to look at what additional powers we want to ask for. [from the government] “To continue the fight.”
Underground superboxes and what the future will bring
Cllr Robinson said he wanted to see the quality of street cleaning “improved across the city”. This includes the cleaning of the Euro bins, which is expected to take place over the next few months with money allocated from the city council’s budget this year.
Major Robinson said: “I think it’s fair to say that when the Euro bins first came they were a huge improvement on what I call the mouse feast of rat collections in the alleys. The alleys are certainly a lot cleaner than they used to be and I’ve noticed that reports of vermin are down from a few years ago.” We did, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a mouse problem in the area.
“We are as concerned as residents about the need to properly focus on euro boxes.”
The city council also plans to install more CCTV cameras in the most fly-hit spots in the area. In 2022 the council’s first underground super bins were installed at 12 sites across the city, including two streets in Kensington.
The £1.5m scheme aimed to clean up communities and tackle litter and vermin problems on hundreds of inner city streets that lack space to use wheelie bins. But the Holt Road Residents Association says many streets in Kensington that were promised underground bins as part of the rollout have yet to receive them.
Asked for an update on the rollout this week, Cllr Robinson said there would be a review in the coming months into how Euro bins and underground bins work across the city and what the future holds.
He added that while underground tanks have been largely successful, they present some logistical challenges in terms of where they can be installed due to things like sewers and gas pipes being located below street level.
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