Manchester City Council is to introduce a legal order to stop areas of the city being overrun by the spread of shared houses, following a recent change in the law.

The City Council is to introduce an Article Four Direction, which means that property investor-developers will still have to apply for planning permission if they want to turn buildings into a house of multiple occupation (HMO).

Under the Town And Country Planning Order, which the government introduced on 1 October, developers no longer need planning permission to turn homes into shared houses.

However, councils have the opportunity to introduce directions, meaning they can effectively opt out of this change in the law and insist that developers still apply for planning permission when creating shared houses.

The move is expected to have an impact in areas like Fallowfield and Withington, where high concentrations of house sharing can have a negative impact on the surrounding neighbourhood by causing an increase in noise and disturbance.

The direction, which will cover the whole of the city of Manchester, will now come into effect in October 2011.

Councillor Nigel Murphy, Manchester City Councils Executive Member for the Environment, said: "We know a lot of residents are concerned about the spread of shared houses, particularly in areas in the south of the city, and we are keen to do whatever we can to manage this spread.

"The new law would have meant that any control over the spread of shared houses would have been taken away from us.

"However, we need to be able to tackle the problems caused by the uncontrolled growth of shared lets, making sure communities retain the identity of their neighbourhoods, and that is why we are now introducing this order."