New Study finds landlords must step up to help tackle waste crisis

2 February 2021

A new report shines a spotlight on barriers to recycling and managing waste for tenants in HMOs

You can read the full report here.

New research from environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy’s Centre for Social Innovation reveals just how difficult tenants in houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) find it to do the right thing when it comes to waste and recycling. The report, unveiled today at the charity’s annual Network Conference, also looks at simple steps that local authorities and landlords could take to increase recycling, reduce contamination and excess waste and address fly-tipping.

In 2018, there were an estimated 497,000 HMOs in England and Wales and they present specific waste management challenges for local authorities. In addition to generating more waste than other property types, anecdotal evidence suggests these properties often produce low recycling rates, high levels of recycling contamination, as well as incorrect presentation of waste and fly-tipping.

Among the recommendations, the report highlights that tenants expect the landlord to be a messenger of waste information and therefore the most effective way of ensuring HMO tenants have both the facilities and information to dispose of their waste correctly is a top-down approach from the council, encouraging landlords to put this in place.

It also offers some other ideas to improve communications with tenants.

• Explore ways for improving council communication with landlords, including increased enforcement of HMO licensing schemes.
• As letting/property management agents are often seen as ‘the landlord’, consider how they can be engaged. In addition, consider how contracted cleaners can be communicated with, which is likely via the landlord who employs them.
• Consider including more specific rules on waste within licensing schemes (eg a requirement to display waste disposal information in communal spaces, to provide for separating recycling indoors and to embed waste information within the property eg through more permanent signage).
• Make it as easy as possible for landlords to provide the correct information to their tenants (eg providing resources such as signage, information booklets, bin stickers and guidance or signposting to best practice examples).

Keep Britain Tidy’s Chief Executive Allison Ogden-Newton said: “It is clear, from working with more than 70 tenants in HMOs, that many of them would happily do the right thing when it comes to waste and recycling but simply do not have the infrastructure or the knowledge to do that.

“If we are to reduce waste and increase recycling we need to be reaching out to everyone in our communities, even those who are perceived ‘hard to reach’.

“This report signposts a number of simple, easy-to-implement changes that could tackle the issues faced by these tenants, allowing them to contribute to the overall performance of waste and recycling services.”

Keep Britain Tidy’s new research was carried out with tenants in a number of ways including:

• Diaries completed by 72 tenants to better understand the context of living in a HMO and how this impacts on waste management
• Six online focus groups and 32 telephone interviews carried out with tenants, to further explore behavioural drivers of their current waste management.
• Three co-design workshops with HMO tenants to explore and develop their intervention ideas for improving waste management in HMOs.

You can read the full report here.

Following on from this research, Keep Britain Tidy will be looking to work with local authorities to pilot new interventions in line with the findings in the report and looking at how policy and legislation could be used to support the drive to improve waste management and increase recycling from HMOs.