HMO application is submitted on Grays residential street

By Ellis Yeboah-Afari 13th Oct 2025

A PLAN has been submitted totrun a family home on a residential estate in Grays into a house of multiple occupancy (HMO).

On behalf of the owner property agent Ashfaq Ahmed has applied for planning permission to convert the three-storey property at 22 Rookwood Close.

The application - and the opportunity to comment on it, can be found here. If successful it would allow the dwelling to become home to four tenants.

HMOs (house in multiple occupation) involve at least three tenants living together, sharing toilet, kitchen and bathroom facilities.

Conditions may often be poor or cramped - though the council should impose rigourous standards.

There could also be concerns about the loss of a family home from the housing market.

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Comments (4)

This discussion is now closed for comments.

I have practical experience of this situation in a University Town.
Even if the landlord also lives in one of the “bedsits” and personally knows the neighbours, it can be almost impossible to avoid conflict through the party walls, especially in what looks like curtain wall terraced housing.
It might be more acceptable if the extra residents were in a “Slough Shed” at the bottom of the garden!

Unfortunately comments on this application don’t seem to be allowed. My concern is trivial but I would have liked to have had it noted nonetheless.

I used to go to Torquay until the hotels were turned into HMO's. This lovely town, has been turned into a place where you don't go out at night! Now residents boycott Grays, as it isn't very nice anymore and that's just in the daytime. I now have my food shopping delivered, I don't think you can revive Thurrock, not with the way some people can do what they like in our borough!😡