If you can buy a house for a pound, what could you do with a million? It’s question worth asking if you live in Torbay, St Helens, Ipswich, Mansfield ,Bolsover, Luton, Bolton, Liverpool, Doncaster, Corby, East Northamptonshire, South Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes, Durham, Cornwall, or Warwick. Because housing minister John Healey announced that those councils are today being granted a £1 million between them to tackle the particular empty homes problems that affect those places. In Doncaster and Stoke it is tackling a problem of declining demand, In St Helen’s and Ipswich it is newly built flats that remain empty, in Nottinghamshire it is tackling the legacy of empty homes left by the closure of the coal board’s housing. It’s taken a lot of persueding for the government to agree to this package but that makes it no less welcome.
Friday, February 05, 2010
New £1million empty homes fund
If you can buy a house for a pound, what could you do with a million? It’s question worth asking if you live in Torbay, St Helens, Ipswich, Mansfield ,Bolsover, Luton, Bolton, Liverpool, Doncaster, Corby, East Northamptonshire, South Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes, Durham, Cornwall, or Warwick. Because housing minister John Healey announced that those councils are today being granted a £1 million between them to tackle the particular empty homes problems that affect those places. In Doncaster and Stoke it is tackling a problem of declining demand, In St Helen’s and Ipswich it is newly built flats that remain empty, in Nottinghamshire it is tackling the legacy of empty homes left by the closure of the coal board’s housing. It’s taken a lot of persueding for the government to agree to this package but that makes it no less welcome.
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So John Healey says these councils will get " training for front line workers". Who's going to deliver this training then?...The same numpties who drew up the constrictive guidance notes for Sec 85 of the Local Government Act 2003? Or the wallies who fail to have any enforcement for registering houses in the same way as cars? Or the jobsworths who knock back PN1 applications to the Land Registry?
ReplyDeleteI'll believe it when I see it.
Hopefully we don't count as numpties. The work will be carried out by the Empty Homes Agency, the Homes and Communities Accademy and the Chartered Institute of Housing.
ReplyDeletePresent company excepted David.
ReplyDeleteI hope it will be delivered in a robust and "can do" manner, and overcome the trepidacious, timorous attitude of some councils.