The number is the story. Salford City Council surveyed converted buildings across the city and found that 99% failed to meet expected standards. Fire safety was the most pressing issue, with 97% of surveyed properties raising fire-related hazards. As Place North West reported, the council now wants a citywide licensing scheme in response.
What a Section 257 HMO actually is
This is a specific and badly understood category. A Section 257 HMO is a building converted into flats where fewer than two thirds of those flats are owner-occupied, and where the conversion did not meet the building regulations in force at the time. In practice it usually means an old house or commercial building chopped into flats years ago, often with shared staircases, poor compartmentation and no meaningful fire strategy.
They fall through a gap. They are not treated like traditional shared houses, and they are not covered by the licensing regimes most people are aware of. In Salford they are concentrated in Eccles and Broughton, but exist throughout the city.
The fire safety point
Ninety-seven per cent with fire hazards is not a statistic to skim past. In a converted building, fire compartmentation is what buys people the time to get out. If the conversion never included it, or it has been degraded by decades of subsequent work, a fire in one flat becomes a fire in the building. The survey also flagged structural problems, excess cold and damp.
What licensing would require, and what it costs
Landlords would pay between £1,300 and £2,000 a year depending on property size, and operating without a licence would be a criminal offence. The scheme complements Article 4 directions already in place across Salford restricting permitted development rights for converting houses into HMOs.
The objection, and whether it holds
Seventy per cent of landlord respondents opposed the scheme in consultation. The standard argument is that licensing fees are a tax on compliant landlords that does nothing about the bad ones, and get passed to tenants in rent.
That argument carries real weight in most licensing debates. It carries less here. A 99% failure rate means this is not a problem of a few rogue operators among a compliant majority. It means the sector as inspected is almost entirely non-compliant, and the compliant-landlord defence does not have many people to defend. The fair criticism is about enforcement capacity: a licensing scheme that collects fees and never inspects is worse than useless. Salford’s own survey is the strongest evidence that inspection, not paperwork, is the thing that has been missing.
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