Hertsmere sealed the Potters Bar Article 4 Direction on 12 August: from 6 May 2027 turning a family home into a shared house needs planning permission. Fourteen landlords have already asked to certify existing HMOs.
Hertsmere Borough Council has confirmed the Article 4 Direction that ends the automatic right to turn a Potters Bar family home into a small shared house. The direction was sealed on 12 August 2026 and the confirmation notice, signed by the council’s head of planning, says it comes into force on 6 May 2027. From that date, converting a house (planning use class C3) into a house in multiple occupation for three to six unrelated people (use class C4) anywhere in the town’s four borough wards will need a planning application, with neighbours consulted and the decision made on its planning merits.
The document itself, The Hertsmere Borough Council (Houses in Multiple Occupation) (Potters Bar) Article 4 Direction 2026, was made under the council’s common seal on 23 April 2026 and carries a second seal recording its confirmation on 12 August. It covers Potters Bar Parkfield, Potters Bar Oakmere, Potters Bar Furzefield and Bentley Heath and The Royds wards, marked by a red line on the plan annexed to it. Nowhere else in Hertsmere is affected: Borehamwood, Bushey, Radlett and the villages keep the national permitted development right.
Landlords have not waited for the paperwork. Between 16 July and 11 August the council’s planning register received fourteen applications for certificates of lawful existing use for HMOs in Potters Bar, all still awaiting a decision. Each asks the council to certify, in effect, that the property was already a lawful small HMO before the new rules bite. In the whole of 2025, our search of the register for descriptions mentioning HMOs found one such certificate application in the town.
What the direction does, and does not do
An Article 4 Direction removes a permitted development right in a defined area. Under the council’s own explanation, the right being withdrawn is Class L(b) of Part 3 of the General Permitted Development Order: the change of use from a dwelling house to a small HMO of up to six occupants. Larger HMOs, for seven or more people, already need planning permission and will continue to.
The council chose the non-immediate route. Its November 2025 report to full council explains why: an immediate direction would have exposed the council to compensation claims from owners under sections 107 and 108 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 if rights were removed less than twelve months after first notice. The council’s management board rejected the emergency route on 20 August 2025 and Cabinet endorsed that on 12 November 2025. The same report asked councillors for £150,000 to fund a temporary post to draft the direction, and warned the work would take more than a year. It has taken slightly less: notice of intention on 17 April 2026, direction made on 23 April, consultation from 6 May to 17 June, confirmation on 12 August, in force on 6 May 2027.
Confirming a direction is not the same as refusing conversions. The council’s frequently asked questions say plainly that the direction “requires that planning permission be sought from the Council, it does not automatically mean that planning permission will be refused”. What changes is that neighbours will be consulted and matters such as parking, bin storage and the number of HMOs already in a street become material to the decision. The November report says that in Potters Bar most existing HMOs are small ones that never needed permission, and that “it is these matters of detail which is causing concern locally”.
Existing small HMOs are untouched. The FAQ states that a landlord whose HMO of up to six residents was converted under permitted development before the direction is confirmed “will not be affected by this decision”, and that such owners “may apply for a Lawful Development Certificate (LDC) to confirm that the HMO use is lawful and did not require planning permission”, submitting evidence that the property was in use as a small HMO before 6 May 2027.
The fourteen certificate applications
That is the invitation the recent applications take up. The Hertsmere planning register lists the following certificate of lawful existing use applications for Potters Bar HMOs, all validated the day they arrived and all awaiting decision:
- 16 July: 26/0981/CLE, 4 Honeywood Close, existing use as an HMO (Class C4).
- 20 July: 26/0995/CLE, 22 Holly Drive, six-bed HMO; 26/0996/CLE, 8 Melrose Avenue; 26/0997/CLE, 44 Kimptons Mead; 26/0998/CLE, 119 Ashwood Road; 26/0999/CLE, 87 Southgate Road, five-bed HMO; 26/1000/CLE, 81 Sunnybank Road, six-bed HMO.
- 3 August: 26/1083/CLE, 82 Wroxham Gardens; 26/1084/CLE, 16 Richmond Road; 26/1085/CLE, 21 Firs Lane, described as “regularisation of existing use as an HMO”; 26/1088/CLE, 29 Oulton Crescent, six-bed HMO; 26/1090/CLE, 28 Mutton Lane, five-bed HMO.
- 10 August: 26/1136/CLE, 47 Cranborne Crescent, six-bed HMO.
- 11 August: 26/1145/CLE, 87 Wroxham Gardens.
A certificate application is not a planning application. The council can only decide whether the use described is lawful on the evidence submitted; it cannot weigh parking, amenity or neighbours’ views, and neighbours are not consulted. If a certificate is granted, the small HMO use is confirmed as lawful and the Article 4 Direction will not catch it.
Alongside the certificates, the register shows the larger conversions that always needed permission continuing to arrive. At 31 Tempest Avenue two alternative applications, 26/1001/FUL for a ten-bedroom HMO and 26/1008/FUL for twelve, would take an existing six-bed C4 house into the larger sui generis class. At 24 Southgate Road, 26/0914/FUL and 26/0971/FUL seek a ten-bedroom or eight-bedroom HMO in place of a family house, with a rear extension and garage conversion. At 67 Cotton Road, 26/0698/FUL would take a six-occupant HMO to seven. All are pending.
Why Potters Bar
The council’s evidence paper, a consultation draft dated 23 April 2026, counts 280 confirmed and suspected HMOs across Hertsmere, of which 143 are in Potters Bar and 105 in Borehamwood. By ward, Potters Bar Furzefield has 42, Bentley Heath and The Royds 40, Potters Bar Oakmere 36 and Potters Bar Parkfield 25. Bushey has 19, Elstree village five, Radlett two.
Licensing figures in the November 2025 council report show the pace of change. Licensed HMOs in Potters Bar, which count only those with five or more occupants, rose from 39 in December 2021 to 44 in November 2022, 48 in April 2023, 67 in October 2024 and 82 in August 2025. Borehamwood’s figure moved from 43 to 53 over the same period; the borough total went from 94 to 151. The councillors’ task and finish group report, presented to Cabinet on 12 November 2025, records HMO licences issued or renewed in Potters Bar at three in 2021, 16 in 2022, 34 in 2023, 60 in 2024 and 75 in the first half of 2025, with 15 more pending. That group described the spread as “exponential”, supported an Article 4 Direction “in principle” but was “disappointed at the speed of progress”, and noted a residents’ meeting at Potters Bar Cricket Club on 2 September 2025 and a petition of more than 3,000 signatures.
Planning applications tell the same story. The evidence paper found 48 applications mentioning HMOs since 2013 across the borough, of which 11 came in 2024 and 18 in 2025, a 61 per cent rise in a year. It also records that of those decided, 13 were granted and five refused, “demonstrating a consistency to approve applications relating to HMOs”.
The paper is careful to say that HMOs are a legitimate part of the housing mix, “a particularly important low-cost option for students, single people and key workers”, in the task and finish group’s words, and that the aim is to bring their spread under control rather than to remove them.
What it means for you
If you own or rent a house in Potters Bar: until 6 May 2027, nothing changes; a neighbouring house can still become a shared house for up to six people without a planning application. From that date, any new small HMO in Parkfield, Oakmere, Furzefield or Bentley Heath and The Royds needs permission, and you will be consulted as a neighbour in the usual way. Track applications through our Borehamwood planning news page, which explains how to search and comment on the Hertsmere register.
If you live next to one of the fourteen addresses above: there is no consultation on a certificate application, because the only question is whether the use is already lawful. You can still view each file on the register, and if you have evidence that a property was not in use as an HMO for the period claimed, the council’s planning department is the place to send it.
If you are a landlord with an existing small HMO in Potters Bar: the council’s FAQ says you are not affected, and that a lawful development certificate is the way to prove it. Keep tenancy agreements, council tax and utility records; the certificate turns on evidence of use. If you are planning a new conversion, you have until 6 May 2027 under permitted development, after which a full application is needed. Mandatory licensing continues regardless for any HMO of five or more people, and operating one without a licence is a criminal offence.
Everyone can still shape the standards HMOs must meet. Separately from the Article 4 Direction, Hertsmere is consulting until 31 August 2026 on new amenity standards for HMOs, covering bedroom, kitchen and bathroom sizes, refuse storage, tidy gardens and quarterly inspections. The draft policy is on the council’s website and responses go through an online survey. Cabinet agreed the draft on 13 July and expects it back for adoption after the consultation.
The Borehamwood Post will report the decisions on the fourteen certificate applications and the Tempest Avenue and Southgate Road schemes as they are made.
Have your say