Caroline Spellman has been asking a lot of questions about Empty Dwelling Management Orders recently. That’s a good thing, in a few months she could well be the minister responsible for them. I’ve met her a couple of times and talked to her about them. And I have to say that I feel fairly sure that she just doesn’t like them. In fact in her conference speech she compared being served an EDMO to getting fined for leaving your rubbish bin out on the wrong day- in other words - an unnecessary interference by the state. Well, we may just have to agree to disagree on that. But what comes over to me about Caroline Spellman is that she is a thoughtful woman and a pragmatic politician. So hopefully the answer to her latest question will make her think. In total just fifteen councils have used EDMOs. Of those twelve are Conservative controlled councils and just three Labour. Philosophically EDMOs may not be a very Tory idea, but practically they seem to be useful to Tory councils. Pragmatically I hope she sees that the legislation is fine just as it is.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
EDMOs and Tory councils
Caroline Spellman has been asking a lot of questions about Empty Dwelling Management Orders recently. That’s a good thing, in a few months she could well be the minister responsible for them. I’ve met her a couple of times and talked to her about them. And I have to say that I feel fairly sure that she just doesn’t like them. In fact in her conference speech she compared being served an EDMO to getting fined for leaving your rubbish bin out on the wrong day- in other words - an unnecessary interference by the state. Well, we may just have to agree to disagree on that. But what comes over to me about Caroline Spellman is that she is a thoughtful woman and a pragmatic politician. So hopefully the answer to her latest question will make her think. In total just fifteen councils have used EDMOs. Of those twelve are Conservative controlled councils and just three Labour. Philosophically EDMOs may not be a very Tory idea, but practically they seem to be useful to Tory councils. Pragmatically I hope she sees that the legislation is fine just as it is.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well, what I would like to know is while the Government are busy serving EDMOs on privately owned properties, what are they doing about the thousands of empty council houses, so in turn Government-owned properties lying empty across various London Boroughs for a number of years?
ReplyDeleteSome of these Council owned boarded up houses across
London are currently occupied by squatters, again for a number of years and others are simply boarded up while families are left on Council waiting lists waiting to be housed and people are homeless, hungry and dying in the streets.
Good point. If you want to get soem action you can try using a PROD. This is a power that anybody can use to request the disposal of publicly owned empty homes or land: http://www.emptyhomes.com/usefulinformation/prods.html
ReplyDelete