Introduction

A common concern in Scotland, England and Wales has been the inadequacy of existing statutory powers to regulate and improve standards and safety in houses in multiple occupation (HMOs). Over many years, argument and debate have been engaged about the need for stronger legislation, particularly the licensing of HMOs, to deal more effectively and consistently with the diverse problems posed by badly managed and maintained HMOs.

Throughout the 1980s, demands for more interventionist action were made by housing pressure groups, academics, professional housing and environmental health institutes and numerous local authorities across the United Kingdom. This shared advocacy for HMO licensing made no impression on government policy either in Scotland or in England and Wales until the early 1990s when the policy framework in Scotland diverged from elsewhere in the U.K. As Murie (1996, p 212) noted in a review of the similarities and differences in housing policy between Scotland and the rest of the UK: “common pressures acting on different landscapes do not produce the same outcomes”.

A discretionary power to allow local authorities to license certain HMOs was introduced in Scotland in 1991 and since October 2000 their regulation has become a mandatory duty covering all local authorities and most HMOs in the private, public and voluntary sectors. Meanwhile, in England and Wales, the status quo essentially persisted through the 1990s with the same arguments for licensing continuing to be made, to little effect. With the arrival of a Labour government in Westminster in 1997, with a manifesto commitment to license HMOs, a more sympathetic attitude emerged. However, progress has been painfully slow and at the time of writing there is only a ministerial promise that new legislation to introduce mandatory HMO licensing in England and Wales would “be launched in the autumn” (Inside Housing, 2001, p 3).

This aim of this chapter is to chart the divergent policy direction taken in Scotland from the rest of the UK in responding to the problems posed by HMOs. After setting the context, the chapter describes the pressures that led to local authorities gaining the discretionary power to introduce local licensing schemes when the wider political environment emphasised market deregulation.