Sandwell Planning Bingo: HMOs, Care Homes, Retrospective Wonders and the Weekly List of Doom
There are some things in life you can rely on.
The sun rises. The bins sometimes get emptied. A council report will always contain the phrase “robust governance” shortly before proving the opposite. And Sandwell’s weekly planning lists will quietly drop a few little grenades among the porches, dormers and “single-storey rear extensions”.
At first glance, the weekly planning list looks harmless enough.
A porch here.
A garage conversion there.
A rear extension.
A dormer.
A summer house.
A small outbuilding that will absolutely, definitely, never ever become anything else. Honest, guv.
But look a little closer and the picture changes.
Since April, Sandwell’s planning lists have shown a steady stream of applications for HMOs, children’s residential care homes, supported living, retrospective development, infill housing, open-space development, council-linked applications and major condition discharges.
All tucked neatly away in weekly lists as if they are just another replacement canopy.
Nothing to see here, residents. Move along. Preferably before the consultation deadline passes.
The HMO conveyor belt
Let us start with HMOs, because apparently ordinary family homes are now just a warm-up act before the beds, bins and bike stores arrive.
We have seen applications for:
- a proposed 9-bedroom / 9-person HMO at 1 Queens Road, Smethwick;
- a 7-person HMO proposal at 124 Cheshire Road, Smethwick, returning after previous refusals;
- a continued 13-bedroom / 13-person HMO at Walsall Street, Wednesbury;
- an 8-person HMO proposal at 322 High Street, Smethwick, also following a refused application;
- other supported living and HMO-style proposals dotted around the borough.
And then residents have the sheer cheek to notice.
How unreasonable of them.
Residents in Smethwick and Wednesbury are now launching petitions, raising objections and asking why their streets are being changed one property at a time. One petition against the Queens Road HMO has attracted hundreds of signatures. Another petition raises wider concerns around Churchfields Road and Wednesbury, with residents complaining about HMO growth, enforcement, alleged loopholes and the loss of ordinary family housing.
Then there is Cheshire Road, where press coverage has highlighted plans returning again after earlier objections and refusals. Apparently, in planning world, “no” can sometimes mean “come back with a slightly different version and see if everyone is too tired to object this time”.
It is like Groundhog Day, but with more bin stores.
Planning, licensing and the great Sandwell shrug
The council will no doubt remind everyone that planning and licensing are different things.
Indeed they are.
Planning looks at land use. Licensing looks at standards, safety and management. Enforcement looks at breaches. Community safety looks at anti-social behaviour. Housing looks at conditions. The police look at crime. Residents look at the street they actually live in.
And therein lies the problem.
Everyone has a little piece of the jigsaw, but residents are the ones standing there trying to work out why the picture on the box appears to show their road being slowly turned into a dormitory corridor.
If Sandwell has live HMO applications, licensed HMOs, suspected unlicensed HMOs, repeat applications, petitions, resident objections and enforcement concerns, then the answer cannot be “that’s another department”.
That is not governance.
That is municipal pass-the-parcel.
And sadly, when the music stops, it is usually the residents holding the parcel. Normally with a planning notice wrapped around it.
Children’s homes: serious issue, serious scrutiny needed
Then we have the growing number of applications for children’s residential care homes.
Let us be absolutely clear. Vulnerable children need safe, stable, properly run homes. Nobody decent argues otherwise.
But that does not mean every ordinary dwelling can be converted without proper questions being asked.
Since April, applications have appeared across Sandwell for children’s residential care homes and C2 uses, including in Great Barr, Tividale, Wednesbury, Smethwick, Cradley Heath, Oldbury and West Bromwich.
Some are for two children. Some are for three. Some for four. Some involve garage conversions. Some come through lawful development routes. Some appear as retention. Some sit near other applications and should be looked at cumulatively, not as isolated little dots on a map.
The planning question is not simply “how many children?”
The question is: how does the property operate?
Will there be staff rotas?
Sleeping-in staff?
Managers?
Professional visitors?
Emergency call-outs?
Shift changes?
Extra vehicles?
Safeguarding requirements?
Ofsted registration?
Police consultation?
Children’s Services input?
If the answer is “we’ll look at that later”, then that is not good enough.
This is not about opposing care. It is about making sure care is properly located, properly scrutinised and properly joined up.
Children deserve better than planning-by-spreadsheet. Residents deserve better than finding out after the event.
Retrospective planning: build first, ask nicely later
Another little gem running through the weekly lists is the number of retrospective or retention applications.
Retention of storage units.
Retention of outbuildings.
Retention of extensions.
Retention of walls, gates and piers.
Retention of business uses.
Retrospective change of use.
At this point, “retention” is becoming one of Sandwell’s most popular architectural styles.
Now, not every retrospective application is scandalous. Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes the rules are complicated. Sometimes the works are minor.
But when the pattern keeps appearing, residents are entitled to ask whether the system is controlling development or merely tidying up after it.
Because there is a big difference between:
“Can I have permission to do this?”
and
“I’ve done it. Fancy approving it?”
One respects the planning process.
The other treats it like a customer feedback form.
The quiet danger of condition discharges
Then we have discharge of conditions.
Lovely phrase, that. Very soothing. Very technical. Sounds like something best left to officers in a quiet room with a spreadsheet and a cup of council-issue coffee.
But condition discharges are where the detail lives.
Drainage.
Parking.
Contamination.
Landscaping.
Noise.
Lighting.
Construction management.
Waste.
Highways.
Materials.
Access.
In other words, all the stuff residents actually care about.
Since April, we have seen condition discharges linked to major or sensitive sites including Lidl at Horseley Heath, Oldbury Police Station, The Hayes in West Bromwich, Lewis Street, Mill Street, Kings Hill Business Park and Heath Lane Hospital.
These should not disappear into the technical mist.
Councillors should demand plain-English summaries. Residents should know what is being signed off. If a condition affects traffic, drainage, noise, waste, construction or amenity, then it matters.
Calling something “technical” should not be a magic cloak of invisibility.
Open space: treasured until someone wants to build on it
Then we come to open space.
Brook Road Open Space. Brandhall. Former golf course land. Sites that trigger the usual warm words about biodiversity, community, trees, drainage, access, play space and local value.
And then suddenly, when a scheme appears, everyone is expected to nod along because it is “needed”, “strategic”, “regeneration”, “best use of land”, or whatever phrase has been freshly removed from the council buzzword cupboard.
Brandhall and Causeway Green Primary School raise major questions because the council is not just some distant observer. It has interests, roles and responsibilities. Where the council is applicant, promoter, landowner, service provider or decision-maker, the transparency bar should be higher, not lower.
Brook Road Open Space raises a simple question too:
If it is open space, why are we building on it?
And if the answer is “well, this was approved years ago”, then councillors should ask whether circumstances have changed. Policy changes. Biodiversity expectations change. Drainage concerns change. Local need changes. Community value changes.
A previous approval should not be treated like a planning relic brought down from Mount Oldbury on tablets of stone.
Friar Park: planning pressure without the gloss
Friar Park also keeps appearing in the planning lists.
Some of it is routine. Some of it is not.
The standout is Alma Street and the proposal for 10 self-contained flats. That is not just a little domestic tweak. That raises parking, bins, amenity, access, fire safety and over-intensification questions.
There are also other Friar Park and Stone Cross applications involving extensions, outbuildings, retention matters and side developments.
One application by itself may be manageable. The problem is what happens when every “small” application is treated as isolated and nobody looks at the total pressure on the area.
Planning cannot be done street by street, application by application, with no wider memory.
Residents know when parking is already tight.
Residents know when bins are already a problem.
Residents know when services are stretched.
Residents know when the character of an area is changing.
The council needs to know too.
And if it does know, it needs to show its working.
Infill, backland and the “just one more house” trick
Then there is the steady stream of infill and backland proposals.
A dwelling to the side.
A dwelling to the rear.
A former business site becoming homes.
Land adjacent this.
Land behind that.
A small highway here.
A few flats there.
One application may look small. The cumulative effect is not.
Residents know what this means: more traffic, more parking stress, more bins, more overlooking, more construction disruption and less breathing space.
This is exactly why people lose faith in planning. Each individual application is described as manageable. Each concern is treated as not quite enough to refuse. Then five years later everyone wonders why the area feels overcrowded, overparked and underplanned.
A thousand small permissions still add up to one big problem.
Council-linked applications: transparency please
There are also repeated applications involving Sandwell Council links, Roway Lane, Sandwell Council House, Home Improvement Agency, Urban Design, schools and council-associated agents.
Some of these will be perfectly proper. Some may be home adaptations. Some may help vulnerable residents. Good. Nobody should oppose that for the sake of it.
But council-linked applications need transparency.
If the council is applicant, agent, landowner, funder, service provider or decision-maker, residents and councillors should know.
Not because everything is dodgy.
But because secrecy breeds suspicion faster than Japanese knotweed on a neglected council embankment.
Reform now owns the response
This is where the politics comes in.
Reform now controls Sandwell Council.
They did not create every application in the pipeline. They inherited much of the machinery. But they now own the response.
That means they cannot simply stand at the side shouting “Labour did it” while the same system keeps rolling along.
The public will not care who started the conveyor belt if nobody bothers to press stop, pause or at least read what is coming down it.
Reform councillors now need to show whether “change” means change, or whether it means a different colour rosette on the same old planning fog machine.
They should be demanding:
- a live HMO tracker;
- a licensed HMO map;
- a suspected unlicensed HMO tracker;
- a children’s home and C2 tracker;
- a retrospective planning report;
- a council-linked application register;
- plain-English condition summaries;
- ward-level planning alerts;
- HMO concentration mapping;
- proper links between planning, licensing, enforcement, housing, safeguarding and police.
In short: grip.
Not slogans.
Not press photos.
Not “we are listening” while the delegated decision train leaves the station.
Actual grip.
Residents should not need a planning law degree
The basic point is this: residents should not need to become amateur planning consultants to understand what is happening in their road.
They should not have to search weekly lists, decode use classes, spot LDCs, track repeat applications, read officer reports, count bedrooms, compare refusal reasons, check HMO licensing, and then work out whether their objection is “material” enough to be taken seriously.
Yet that is what the system expects.
Then when residents get angry, officialdom acts surprised.
“Why are people so cynical?”
Maybe because they have seen too many decisions made quietly.
Too many retrospective applications regularised.
Too many objections politely noted and filed in the drawer marked “resident noise”.
Too many consultations that feel like theatre.
Too many “minor amendments” that are not minor to the people living next door.
Final thought
Not every planning application is bad.
Not every HMO is bad.
Not every children’s home is bad.
Not every extension is bad.
Not every condition discharge is suspicious.
Not every council-linked application is a problem.
But patterns matter.
And the pattern since April is clear.
More HMOs. Bigger HMOs. Repeat HMOs. Public petitions. More children’s homes. More supported living. More retention applications. More infill. More technical condition discharges. More council-linked entries. More pressure on residents to spot the issue before it is too late.
Sandwell Council needs to stop treating these weekly lists like dull paperwork.
They are not dull paperwork.
They are the early warning system for how neighbourhoods are being changed.
If Reform councillors want to prove they are different, this is a good place to start.
Read the lists. Ask the questions. Demand the maps. Challenge the loopholes. Track the repeat applications. Make officers explain things in plain English. Make sure residents are heard before decisions are made, not after the diggers turn up.
Because if the new administration lets the same old planning machine carry on unchecked, residents will notice.
And this time, “we inherited it” will only work for so long.
Sooner or later, the question becomes:
Who is controlling the council?
The councillors?
Or the weekly list of doom?
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