By Gordon Berry

SPECULATORS WHO have been snapping up flats and other properties in St Andrews to let them out to students may soon find themselves with an investment they cannot use.

Plans are afoot for Fife Council to place a limit of 5% of homes in multiple occupation (HMOs) in any given street, block of flats, or other identifiable unit of properties.

The first casualties of the proposals could now come sooner rather than later, because councillors have asked planning officials to prepare interim guidance which could be put into operation in the near future.

This could affect people who have bought new properties in advance of construction.

The issue was raised at a meeting of Fife Council’s east area development committee, when HMO applications for over 30 properties, 26 of them involving new homes being built by local firm Headon Developments, were continued by councillors.

The company had wanted consent for HMO use on 16 new flats at the former Cowes Coachworks in Argyle Street and 10 at Southfield Court.

Before members of the committee moved on to discuss the applications they considered a report from development manager Jim Birrell, who made it clear that the new draft St Andrews and East Fife local plan includes a policy on HMOs.

He said that part of the policy suggests that the proportion of properties in multiple occupancy should not exceed 5% in some cases, and where this figure is already exceeded, no more applications would be granted.

It is clear that there is rising concern locally over the loss of town centre accommodation to what have been called student “ghettos,” and landlords have been criticised for pocketing huge sums in rent while neglecting their properties.

At the meeting local member Bill Sangster said it was felt by many people that the council had been dragging its heels.

The feeling amongst a number of local organisations could perhaps be summed up in a letter from St Andrews Preservation Trust, which said that such applications amounted to “university accommodation by another name.”

The body’s planning convener, Dorothea Morrison, said that the 5% limit suggested in the draft local plan might provide the time to call a halt to further granting of HMO approvals.

Mrs Morrison said that speculative developers are creating an undesirable situation in the centre of St Andrews, where locals were finding it increasingly impossible to find flats near the town’s amenities.

A letter on the same subject has come from the Central St Andrews Residence Alliance, whose vice-chairman David Middleton pointed out over half of the population of the town centre are students in private accommodation.

This number, he said, did not include students living in university residences and in some buildings and streets residents of HMOs accounted for almost all of the population—an incidence thought to be the highest in the country.

Mr Middleton said that the community is no longer mixed, viable and sustainable, nor is it strong, vibrant and healthy as promoted by Fife Council’s own policy.

One St Andrews member, Councillor Jane Ann Liston was much more supportive of HMOs than other members of the committee, and she said that while she deplored the effect of the university expanding without providing as much accommodation as people would like, the council should not be seen as being “anti-student.”

She said that she was completely opposed to any threshold figure being applied, and that each application should be considered on its own merits.

The application were all continued until officials draw up a detailed map which show the current numbers and concentrations of HMO’s in the town, and in the meantime further work will be done to prepare the interim policy.