A landlord in Cambridge has been blocked from increasing the number of bedrooms in a house they can rent out to people.

Cambridge City Council raised concerns about the “cramped” size of some of the rooms and said they would offer a “poor standard of living”.

The authority therefore refused to grant permission for the landlord to create another bedroom to rent out.

The application was submitted by Riz Rashid, who asked for permission to change 31 Fairfax Road, from a six-bedroom house of multiple occupancy to a seven-bedroom house of multiple occupancy.

Mr Rashid had put forward plans to turn a storeroom into an additional bedroom.

Previous applications had been submitted to the city council to increase the number of bedrooms in the house – including one to create nine-bedrooms for 11 people, and one to create eight bedrooms for eight people – which were refused.

The city council said it had concerns about the latest application due to the size of some of the bedrooms in the house.

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In a report published by the authority, planning officers said the communal area in the house was considered to be an acceptable size, and recognised that some of the existing bedrooms were larger than the minimum space standards.

However, the officer said the proposed new seventh room and the existing sixth bedroom fell below the size standards for a single occupancy room and therefore would “provide an unacceptable standard of living”.

The city council said: “The proposal by virtue of the cramped layout and inadequate size of the proposed bedrooms sizes within the property, would provide an unacceptable and poor standards of living accommodation for future occupiers and would not meet the standards set out in [local plan policies] and the nationally described space standards.

“As a result the proposal would cause harm to the amenity of future occupiers and conflict with [local plan policies] and the nationally described space standards.”