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independent campaigning charity, which The Empty Homes Agency The Empty Homes Agency
exists to highlight the waste of empty 195-197 Victoria Street PO Box 3609
property in England and works with others London Barnsley
to devise and promote sustainable SW1E 5NE S75 1WW
solutions to bring empty property back Phone: 020 7828 6288 Phone/Fax: 01226 390 093
into use. Fax: 020 7828 7006 Mobile: 07719 798 033
Email: info@emptyhomes.com
Web: www.emptyhomes.com
CAMPAIGNING ACTION
PACK ON
EMPTY HOMES
Empty Homes Agency - Campaigning Action Pack on Empty Homes - January 2005
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Dear Friend,
Thank you very much for requesting a Campaigning Action Pack on empty
homes. Across the country more and more groups are campaigning to bring
empty homes back into use to meet housing need.
This pack is aimed to give you all the facts and figures to run a local campaign
to ensure that action is taken in your area on empty homes.
Did you know that across England there are just under 700,000 empty homes?
At a time of housing crisis, this high level of empty homes is surely
unacceptable.
We hope the information in this pack will inspire you to take action to make sure
in your local community the problem of empty homes is not a problem for long.
If you would like any more information from us do visit our website
www.emptyhomes.com or call us on 020 7828 6288.
Yours faithfully
Andrew Purkis
Chair
Empty Homes Agency
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Contents
Chapter Page
Feedback form 21
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CAMPAIGNING ACTION PACK ON EMPTY HOMES
Background briefing
Introduction
Across the country there are just under 700,000 empty homes. At the time of
huge need for housing this high level of empty properties is surely
unacceptable. Around 20% of these empty homes are owned within the public
sector be that Local Authority, Housing Associations or Government
departments. While much good progress has been made within the public
sector tackling these properties, it is vital that there is good stock management
and public empty homes do not remain empty for long.
The major challenge on empty homes is the 80% of empty homes within the
private sector. Any market will always have some degree of empty homes such
is the nature of market transactions. But across England there currently over
three hundred thousand private empty homes that have been empty for more
than 6 months. This is not just the market taking its turn to work, this number of
empty homes represent structural blockages that are preventing these homes
from being brought back into use.
The Empty Homes Agency favours Local Authorities developing policies that
both encourage owners to bring their properties back into use and ultimately
deters them from leaving their homes empty.
There are many things under existing powers that Local Authorities can do to
bring private empty properties back into use. The majority of Local Authorities
now have empty properties strategies and a dedicated officer, an empty
property officer, who deals with this issue.
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In areas where there is demand for housing, we think that every local authority
should have such an empty property strategy in place with decent funding to
ensure that such properties are brought back into use and then they are used to
accommodate those in most need of affordable housing. Yet it is also worth
noting that local authorities have numerous powers under existing laws to take
action on the owners of empty properties. The following list charts the powers
local authorities have:
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We believe that all local authorities, where there is housing need, should use a
mixture of both incentives and enforcement powers to bring properties back into
use.
Campaigns
Over the last year the Empty Homes Agency has been successful in running a
variety of campaigns to encourage more properties being brought back into use.
We ran a long running campaign to give councils the discretion to abolish the
discount on council tax for empty properties.
For many years this had acted as a perverse incentive to encourage owners to
keep their properties empty with the offer of a 50% discount. Local Authorities
now have the right to end this discount under the 2003 Local Government Act.
Certainly when there is housing need in an area, there should be no such empty
property discount for Council Tax. What is happening in your local area?
We’ve also campaigned to ensure that council tax records recording the owners
of empty property can be used by local authorities for their empty property work.
For a long time the Data Protection Act prevented such access to data but now
under the same Act, the 2003 Local Government Act, local authorities now have
the power to access council tax data to find out who owns the properties to
assess if they can work with them to bring them back into use.
Compulsory leasing
The Agency’s biggest campaign over the last year or so has been promoting a
new power for local authorities of Compulsory Leasing. Where owners turn
down offers of assistance and cannot give a good reason why their property is
empty, we have argued for local authorities having the powers to take over the
temporary management of these properties, renovate them and then use them
over a fixed period to accommodate people in housing need.
This new campaign is based on experience working across the country with
authorities such as the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham where
they identified approximately 1,000 owners, which fell into this category. Where
there is housing need and you have this blockage on the housing market, we
have argued that more needed to be done.
This campaign soon gathered a good head of steam with support from Shelter
and Crisis, the Local Government Association, the Transport and General
Workers’ Union and from Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the
British Property Federation. In the summer of 2003 at our joint conference with
the Social Market Foundation, the Government launched a public consultation
on this radical idea. Answers to parliamentary questions revealed that there was
almost overwhelming support for this proposal from the consultation.
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is all about occupation. Compulsory leasing could be a very quick and effective
way to bring properties back into use, to help meet housing need, to remove the
eye-sore of an empty home from a community and to show the owners what
they are missing out on in terms of additional income.
It is important also to reflect on the reasons for needing to bring properties back
into use. Firstly there is the need to accommodate people who are in housing
need, this could refer to homeless people living in bed and breakfast
accommodation or indeed key workers. It is also important to reflect on the
community damage that empty properties do to local areas. The Association of
Chief Police Officers have referred to empty properties as “honey pots for
crime”.
Hence it can be seen that there are a variety of reasons for taking action on this
subject. Below you will find the latest government statistics for empty homes for
the whole of England. If you require more detailed information broken down by
local authority area these are available from the Empty Homes Agency website
at www.emptyhomes.com under ‘facts and figures’
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Latest empty homes figures
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DOES YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITY DO THE FOLLOWING …
On 11th October 2004 the Agency launched a new report – “Unlocking the
potential of London’s empty homes.” which highlights the excellent work being
undertaken by the Boroughs in London.
Over the last few years, the Empty Homes Agency has worked with local
authorities across the country to bring empty homes back into use to meet
housing need.
10. A private sector enforcement policy with a commitment if all else fails to
using enforcement to bring properties back into use
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MODEL LETTER TO YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITY CABINET MEMBER FOR
HOUSING
(Local authorities now run a cabinet system to run business. Senior councillors
have cabinet responsibility for key areas of the council’s business – one such
key area is housing. You can find out the identity of your local cabinet member
for housing by ringing your local council’s main switchboard number and asking
the operator.)
Dear
I am writing to you to find out what my Council is doing to reduce the number of empty homes in
________ (your town).
From Government figures that I have seen, there are _______ empty homes in our local
authority area (your local number can be found at www.emptyhomes.com under ‘facts and
figures’ or call us on 020 7828 6288). At a time of high demand for housing, I am really
concerned at this waste of potential homes.
I understand that the Empty Homes agency, a national charity, has recommended that all local
authorities to give active consideration to the following points:
1. A commitment to tackle empty property within the housing strategy with challenging
targets for getting properties back into use
4. A properly funded private housing assistance policy with the flexibility to offer grants to
owners of empty property
10. A private sector enforcement policy with a commitment if all else fails to using
enforcement to bring properties back into use
I would be most interested to know what you are doing to reduce the number of empty homes
locally and in particular how you respond to the action points above, which are built on national
good practice. I would also be very interested to know whether you are proposing using the new
powers in the Housing Act on empty homes?
Empty homes are in no-one’s best interests and I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
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MODEL PRESS RELEASE FOR LOCAL MEDIA
1. To contact _________ (your group name) please call __________ (list your contact
details – phone/ e-mail)
2. For information on the Empty Homes Agency please visit www.emptyhomes.com
3. On 11th October 2004 the Agency launched a new report – “Unlocking the potential of
London’s empty homes.” which highlights the excellent work being undertaken by the
Boroughs in London.
Over the last few years, the Empty Homes Agency has worked with local authorities across the
country to bring empty homes back into use to meet housing need.
Based on this wide experience of existing good practice, we have developed our Local Authority
Empty Property Charter. We firmly believe that if all local authorities across the country gave
active consideration to all the points in our charter, we could bring even more empty homes
back into use.
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BRIEFING NOTE FOR MEETING COUNCILLORS/OFFICERS
Over the last few years, the Empty Homes Agency has worked with local
authorities across the country to bring empty homes back into use to meet
housing need.
All local authorities have to produce a housing strategy that covers both the
public and private sectors. We believe that such a document should include a
section on how the local authority will work to ensure that empty homes are
brought back into use. We also think that in addition to these words there
should be challenging targets on empty properties and that the local authority
should report each year on the progress made against these targets.
The successful local authorities all have a dedicated officer who works on
empty properties and acts as the main facilitator to bring them back into use. If it
is not a dedicated post, experience suggests that empty homes will lose any
priority attention among the many other priorities. A dedicated officer ensures
that there is focus and one person for owners to work with.
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4. A properly funded private housing assistance policy with the
flexibility to offer grants to owners of empty property
We believe that owners should be given some financial help to bring their empty
home back into use. Many empty homes require some work to bring them to a
decent standard. We think that local authority funds should be put into this work
to act as an incentive to the owner. But if money is invested in this way, the
owner will need to agree with the local authority using the property to
accommodate people in housing need. The technical term for this is the local
authority acquiring nomination rights over the property. This must be part of the
deal to justify the local authority investing in the property.
If a local authority is making funding available through grants and loans is that
information publicly available? And are the enforcement powers that the local
authority might use also publicly promoted? We believe that the owners of
empty homes should know both the good and bad things that could happen to
them and their empty property right at the start.
And linked to the above point is the need for clear communication and
information to owners. Does the local authority communicate on a regular basis
to its owners of empty property?
We also recommend that the local authority conducts a survey of its empty
property owners – how can they devise a strategy to help them if they don’t
know what the owners’ issues are? We recently helped to run such a survey in
the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham with MORI. And the results
are on our web site.
If there is a willing owner, is there also a local means of managing that property
once it has been brought back into use? Many local authorities do not manage
property any more, so we suggest that they strike up partnerships with local
housing associations who can manage these properties. How would your local
authority propose to manage a property which is brought back into use and the
owner doesn’t want to manage it themselves?
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9. A joint multi agency approach to empty property work
But it all else fails is your local authority prepared to do something about it and
use the enforcement powers available to it under the law such as compulsory
purchase or enforced sale? All the above points will be wasted unless there is a
credible threat of enforcement. And is your local authority prepared to use the
new powers in the 2004 Housing Act, which come into force in November
2005?
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MODEL LETTER TO MP ABOUT PUBLIC SECTOR EMPTY HOMES
__________ MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Dear
I am writing to you to express my concern at the number of empty homes in the public sector. In
our area there are according to Government figures ______ (insert number of Local Authority,
RSL and other public sector empty homes for your local authority area from
www.emptyhomes.com under national statistics.) At a time of high housing need we surely need
to do more to bring these homes back into use?
For this reason I support the idea of a national report to Parliament each year of the number of
empty homes in the public sector to include council, housing association and Government
department stock. I understand that when the Select Committee looked into this issue on March
2002 they supported this recommendation.
I would be most interested to know if you support this idea to put more pressure on the public
sector to maximise the use of its property. If you do support this idea it would be great if you
could raise this issue on my behalf with the Housing Minister.
Yours sincerely
And if you do receive a reply do please send us a copy at the Empty Homes
Agency – thanks!
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Public Empty Properties
Did you know that under the 1980 Housing and Planning Act all members of the
public have the power to move a public request ordering disposal (PROD)?
It gave members of the public power to request disposal and challenge the
relevant public authority to say what they were going to do with their property
and if they couldn’t come up with a good reason to then dispose of it and make
sure that it was put back into use.
If you are campaigning and you find that a property you are targeting is publicly
owned you may want to consider raising a public request ordering disposal
(PROD).
If you are interested in finding out more about PRODs please contact the Empty
Homes Agency for a separate campaign pack.
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Contact details of link organisations
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For more information
If you would like more information on the campaign to bring more empty homes
back into use to meet housing need in England please go to our website
www.emptyhomes.com for regular updates.
We also send out a regular monthly e-newsletter and if you would like to be
added to our circulation list please contact us at info@emptyhomes.com.
One issue that this pack hasn’t addressed is the issue of empty homes in areas
where there is little demand by people to live. The technical term for such areas
are low demand areas. And there are many parts in England where there are
empty homes and yet people do not aspire to live in them.
Or
http://www.emptyhomes.com/ld/lowdhome.htm
Or by e-mail info@emptyhomes.com
We’d also like to hear what you think of this campaigning pack – what do you
like? And what should we improve on? If you have any comments on our pack
please complete the form below and send it to us at our London address
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Campaigning Pack – feedback form
Name:
Address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Did you get the campaigning pack for a group? Is so which one?
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