HMO Data - Where is it?

HMO Living in Bristol

Bristol Uncovered uses a lot of data to provide insights into life in Bristol, but I can only provide these insights if the data is available in a form that can be easily accessed. Providing data about the House of Multiple Occupancy (HMO) position in Bristol will allow us to have a more informed debate about how we want Bristol to provide this type of housing. It is difficult to get this data in a usable form.

There are three ways of getting Property Licence data from Bristol City Council:

Online Pinpoint Map

This allows you to search an online map for addresses and post codes and view property licences for individual properties. This is fine if you are just looking at a single location. The image below shows the licensed properties at the "top end" of Coronation Road in Southville.

It would be much easier to analyse the HMO data for Bristol, if it was provided in a similar form to the Planning Data where you can download lists of planning applications without having to look at each one individually.

The image below show the "list" interface for planning applications, which allow you to look at applications in a specific Ward, Post Code etc. over a specific time period. This is what I use to get the planning data for Bristol Uncovered. You can also set up "alerts" where you will receive an e-mail when applications you are interested in are added or updated. For example you can be automatically notified when applications in your post code are added or updated.

Southville Planning Application Search Jan 2025 to Mar 2025

This image shows the "map" interface for Planning Applications where you can explore the data via a map view.

Property Licence Data - Other Options

Whilst you can get data about properties using the Pinpoint Map, Licence holders and Managing Agents information are not available online. This information would be useful if you are trying to contact the people responsible for a HMO.

Bristol City Council do provide 2 ways of getting this information.

Request information for 3 Licensed Properties

You can request details for 3 properties via e-mail, which is useless if you want to analyse the data as an individual enquirer can only request details for 3 properties.

If you e-mail the council for information about 3 properties then you receive the following automated reply:

I completely understand that my request for information should be a low priority, but possibly having to wait a year or more for a response does not seem reasonable.

UPDATE 17/03/2025 - I didn't have to wait 12 months, or even 8 weeks to get a response for my request for details of license holders and management agents for 3 HMOs near to me. I got a response within 24 hours! Thanks to Wendy in the Private Housing Team for the quick response.

Printed Copy of Property Licence Data

There is another option to get this information more quickly for all HMO Properties in Bristol. This can be done by making an appointment to visit City Hall and pay £94.97 to get a printed copy of the entire register. I consider this to be a deliberate attempt to discourage people from getting access to this data. Even if I was willing to take a day off work to visit City Hall, and pay almost £100 to get a paper copy, this would be useless for analysis as it would be very difficult to transfer the data from paper to a computer. This data would also be immediately out of date and I would have to go through the whole process again to get updates.

Over the past four years, only 34 copies of the register have been requested in this format.

2021/22 : 11
2022/23 : 11
2023/24 : 6
2024/25 : 6 (The latest year contains data for Jan/Feb 2025)

How do other Council's provide this data?

I looked at other Councils to see if they provided HMO data in a similar manner to Bristol. I did not find any examples where paper copies of the register were provided for a fee, but I did find plenty of examples where this data was provided in an easily searchable and accessible electronic format. For example Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) provide an online register that shows all of the licence details for each property including the Licence Holder and Managing Agent:

Why is Bristol City Council different?

I submitted a Freedom of Information Request to ask for access to an electronic copy of the "HMO Register" on the grounds that BCC was making it very difficult to access this information, and that it was reasonable to expect them to provide this data in a similar format to other Councils.

Other people had made similar FOI requests in the past that were usually refused, but there was a successful request made in Dec 2022 asking for "a list of addresses for current HMO licensed properties in the Bristol area including the name(s) and correspondence address(es) for the owners for 2022/2023".

My request was refused because the information was already "reasonably accessible":

"information is to be taken to be reasonably accessible to the applicant if it is information which the public authority or any other person is obliged by or under any enactment to communicate (otherwise than by making the information available for inspection) to members of the public on request, whether free of charge or on payment.”

This means that BCC consider charging a fee for a paper copy of the HMO Register is "reasonable".

The other justification for only providing a paper copy was:

"To meet our legal requirements under GDPR the full register is only supplied as a paper copy (hard copy) and not in digital format (soft copy)."

If you buy the paper register, then you must comply with these terms of use.

You can't use details on this register for marketing purposes or without the consent of the individuals listed on it.

BCC Could provide the information electronically, with the same terms of use. I imagine this is to try and prevent people mailing these people with marketing material for "Landlord" related products.

This data would be very useful for producing insights on the number of licence holders and management companies that were inside or outside of Bristol.

In January 2024 BCC launched a new e-form that allows people to submit questions to BCC Committees.

Councillor Tony Dyer, Leader of Bristol City Council said: “It’s great to see the full implementation of this webform following a successful trial run last year.

“Fostering meaningful engagement with the public is an essential part of our role as a local authority and remains a cornerstone of local democracy. To ensure we continue to act in Bristol’s best interests, it’s essential that we do whatever we can to make the process of asking questions and holding us to account a smooth and accessible experience for residents.

“Today’s launch represents our modern, more transparent approach to local government, and with that, I would encourage everyone wanting to have their voice heard to give this new form a try.”

So I submitted a question to the Development Committee asking why the HMO Register was not available in a more accessible format, and why BCC did not provide a service similar to other Councils. The response to my question was the same as the response to my FOI request, and no-one answered the question as to why BCC was so different to other councils when it came to providing a HMO Register.

What Next?

Having hit a dead-end with my requests to the Council, I will now look at other ways of making the HMO Licence data more easily accessible for everyone.

Update 18/03/2025 : I have now published my reports on HMO Licences, where you can look at HMO Density at a Ward, Street and Post Code Level.

I have worked out how I can access the data that is provided in map form, and have been able to extract the data for all HMO Licences in each Ward. I have then extracted the data about all properties in each Post Code area. This data will allow me to provide analysis on "HMO Density" at a Post Code and Ward level.

For example, this URL will return the data for property licences in a specific post code:

And this URL will return data about the properties in a specific post code:

Using my programming and data analysis skills, I will produce reports on "HMO Density" that I plan to publish on BU within the next week. Here is a screenshot of the report I am developing. For example, it shows that in the BS2 8EW post code area, there are 34 properties, of which 29 are licensed as HMO's, giving a "HMO Density" value of 55.9% for that post code.

A 10% threshold of HMOs in a neighborhood is considered a "tipping point" where negative impacts on residential amenity and community cohesion are likely. See HMO Density Evidence Paper for more details.