Unlocking the Potential of Empty Homes

Pathfinder - and you thought it was over

2012-01-23T17:54:00.001Z

Housing minsiter Grant Shapps has made his views on Housing Market Renewal very clear. He didn’t like it. In fact he disliked it so much that he brought the whole programme to an early end last year.... Or so we thought.

Housing Market Renewal or Pathfinder as it was more commonly known was a large government programme that aimed to regenerate the housing market in nine of the poorest areas of the North and Midlands of England. Between its inception in 2003 and its end last year it spent £2.3bn on demolishing 30,000 houses and causing 15,000 to be built.

Quoting SAVE Britain’s Heritage Shapps said “From the start, pathfinder showed an appetite for destruction....The classic English terraced house was demonised as “obsolete”. Whole neighbourhoods were declared surplus at the keystroke of a consultant’s laptop. Bureaucratic arrogance reduced communities to inmates of a “Zoo”—Zone of Opportunity—for house builders. Statisticians assumed compulsory purchase and eviction for demolition were acceptable measures for householders in a property-owning democracy. Quite predictably, the cure turned out worse than the disease.”

The decision to end Pathfinder was one we supported, although public investment in some of the poorest communities in England should be welcome, the use much of it got put to was in our view counterproductive. The programme that was originally intended to regenerate communities ended up demolishing them. It was also ineffective in reducing the levels of empty homes, despite that being one its major aims. There are still about 40,000 empty homes in pathfinder areas, about the same as when the programme began.

But stopping Pathfinder has not proved as easy as it sounds. Local authorities had a pipeline of properties lined up for demolition. First an area was “red-lined”, many residents moved out voluntarily, owners were then bought –out , the reluctant ones subjected to compulsory purchase. This land assembly process took years, and so to stop it any point left thousands of people and homes part way through the process.

After strong lobbying from pathfinder councils, the government eventually agreed that simply turning the funding tap off was not enough. They agreed a transition fund that it announced would allow an orderly wind-down and allow people stuck in the middle of it to be re-housed. The fund originally £30m (later topped up to £35m) was agreed for the five worst affected areas: East Lancashire, Hull, Merseyside Stoke, and Teesside. Applications were approved late last year.

Announcing the funding Grant Shapps was again strident in his criticism of the pathfinder programme:“Under the previous controversial scheme, local communities in some of the most deprived areas of the country were told they would see a transformation of their areas. But in reality, this amounted to bulldozing buildings and knocking down neighbourhoods, pitting neighbour against neighbour, demolishing our Victorian heritage and leaving families trapped in abandoned streets. This programme was a failure and an abject lesson to policy makers."

Given the language and the tone that surrounded this fund, you might very well expect that it would be made available for reversing the pathfinder policy. But to most people’s astonishment the government’s funds are to pay for more of the same. Charles Clover writing in yesterdays’ Sunday Times said "The bid for Merseyside, which Shapps approved, goes far beyond rescuing isolated households. Under this “exit strategy”, councils on Merseyside will demolish another 2,369 homes by 2018, on top of the 4,489 destroyed already. There are no proposals for refurbishment.”

The approved Teeside bid sets out its ambitions clearly “the individual local authority forward strategies for the majority of these areas in the short-medium term is demolition followed by grassing over until market conditions improve.”

Pathfinder it seems is far from over.

Why are councils knocking down council houses when there is a shortage of affordable housng?

2011-11-18T13:29:00.002Z

Sounds barmy doesn't it. But Nottingham city council have identified nearly 1000, and Birmingham over 1200 homes that they have lined up for demolition. If all councils demolish at the same rate it will mean 60,000 affordable homes are to be demolished across England, with only vague plans that some of them will ever be replaced.
Perhaps even more scandalously it turns out that most of these homes are occupied. The tenants will be evicted and presumabaly put into temporary accommodation.

What could possibly justify this huge upheaval of people and such a big loss of affordable homes? The shocking answer is - accounting reasons!

The government has decided to allocate it's own housing debt to councils as part of the scrapping of the HRA subsidy system. Essentially all councils with council homes take a pro-rata share of the government's £23billion housing debt in exchange for keeping rental income on their housing stock. The driver for this was partly councils' unhappiness with the current system, but surely also a desire from Treasury to remove a huge debt off the public deficit.
The unintended consequence is that councils are seeking to avoid the debt by demolishing houses. Each council house they own will attract around £12,000 of debt.Get rid of a 1000 houses and you avoid £12m debt.

Housing minister Grant Shapps was on You and Yours on Radio 4 with me yesterday sounding reassuring. Although he didn't deny that councils will demolish homes to avoid debt, he said that there was unlikely to be an overall increase in demolitions from this measure. Hmmm... I'm not convinced. This looks like the policy people missed the consequence of thier policy. I don't like Nottingham and Birmingham's oppurtunism and cynicism, but have no doubt who is really repsonsible for this disastrous policy. Treasury.

Want to know where all the empty homes are? You can't

2011-11-08T11:39:00.001Z

Imagine for a moment that there is a map of the whole country that shows where every empty home is, how long it has been empty, and who owns it. Imagine too that it is published on-line by the government, it is continually updated and is free to use. Wouldn’t that be amazing for organisations that refurb homes and create affordable housing?

Putting aside the privacy issues for a moment, who should be allowed to use this map? Should it be freely available to everybody?

If not, who?

Imagine no longer. The map actually exists as I described. It’s called the Empty Homes GIS Toolkit and is published by the Homes and Communities Agency. They, in conjunction with Ordnance Survey, who actually own the maps, decided, probably wisely, that access should be restricted. Unless you have signed something called the Public Sector Mapping Agreement you aren’t allowed to see the map.

Who is allowed to sign this agreement? Not, me, and not you, unless you work for what is considered to be a public sector body. This leaves the rather bizarre situation that:

Housing Associations
Housing cooperatives
Housing Charities
Universities …are banned from seeing the map

But Government departments, and local councils, and others including
Royal National Lifeboats
Mountain rescue services
Cancer registries
Areas of Outstanding National Beauty … are allowed full access

Now let's come back to those privacy issues. You wouldn’t want details of empty houses being broadcast to everybody would you? So the line has to be drawn somewhere. That somewhere appears to be between government and non- government organisations. The implication being only government organisations can be trusted with keeping information about property secure. But a quick look at the list of signatories shows that the UK’s biggest broadcaster, the BBC has full access to the map.

So here is a goldmine of information that could be invaluable to housing associations and other affordable housing providers and help get empty homes back into use. That is hampered by a set of rules that prevent those that could use it actually seeing it. If ever there was a case of nonsensical bureaucratic rules that needed changing it is surely this.

Football wrings the last drops of money from thier communities

2011-08-23T17:29:00.001+01:00

From London to Liverpool England’s richest football clubs are wringing the last few drops of money out of their communities by boarding up properties and homes for future developments.

Football is, or at least was, the working mans sport. The great clubs of this country were founded in the gritty working class areas of our towns and cities. The founder members of the Football league from Blackburn , to Stoke, to Everton were set up where the men lived who worked in the heavy furnaces of Britain’s industrial heartlands.

Life was hard, but for ninety minutes on a Saturday afternoon working men could go and cheer and jeer their team a few minutes walk from where they lived. It created communities and identities for areas that frankly looked pretty much the same. Perhaps in the back of many football supporters’ minds was the remote possibility that they, their son or grandson could one day become a player for the club too. Occasionally it happened; Stanley Matthews was born around the corner from the Victoria ground where he became a legend for Stoke City, Bobby Moore was born just up the road from West Ham in Barking, and Paul Gascoigne was born over the river from Newcastle in Gateshead.

But many things have changed. Football has become a mega business. The Premier league (where Blackburn, Stoke and Everton still play) has become the biggest revenue-generating league in the world. Broadcasting matches to vast worldwide audiences and recruiting vastly paid players from every corner of the globe.

The working class man might well ask what this has all got to do with him and his hometown anymore. First the heavy industry disappeared, then the club moved away from their grimy inner city homes to smart corporate stadiums on the city ring road. Finally the once remote chance of his son playing for the team disappeared altogether.

The final insult is the dismissive way some of the reaming inner city clubs are landbanking property around their grounds. This week housing minister Grant Shapps criticised Liverpool council and football club for the delay in redeveloping Anfield stadium. This extraordinary saga has been dragging on for the best part of fifteen years. In the late 1990s Liverpool FC’s neighbours Everton asked the council if they could build a new stadium in the nearby Victorian municipal park; Stanley Park. Not surprisingly the council said no. But in a breathtaking act of cheek Liverpool FC then made the same request but with the added threat that if they didn’t get what they wanted they would move away from Liverpool altogether. Fearing that they would loose vast income from the club the council capitulated. Planning permission was given in 2008, but a change of ownership of the club meant the proposal was put on hold where it still sits. Meanwhile the club keeping its options open had acquired houses around its existing Anfield ground. All of the houses on Kemlyn road were demolished in the early 1990s to make way for a new stand. Homes in nearby Skerries and Lothair Roads were bought up and boarded up. To the club’s credit the Skerries road houses were eventually renovated and sold, but today virtually every house in Lothair road remains empty and boarded up waiting in case the club change their mind again and decide to expand their current stadium.

In London many houses on Tottenham high road stand empty and boarded up following August’s riots and arson. But fifteen have been empty for much longer. They form the frontage of the road behind which Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane ground sits. The properties were bought by the club for an apparently aborted plan to build a public piazza in front of the ground. These weren’t just any old buildings they included Georgian and Victorian houses many of which are listed buildings. The demolition of buildings like these would in normal circumstances be prohibited, but taking a leaf out of Liverpool’s book the club threatened to walk away altogether if it didn’t get what it wanted. Plans were mooted that the club would move into Wembley stadium and a bid was submitted to set up home on the site of the Olympic stadium.

As the country searches for answers as to why the inner cities erupted into disorder and violence in August, some of the football clubs that once defined these areas might pause for thought. Have their actions and search for wealth added to the sense of purpose and stability of the areas they represent? Or have they exploited them and threatened to walk away if they don’t get what they want? The streets of vacant property surrounding football grounds suggest the latter.

Councillor Richard Kemp and Why Houses Must Go.

2011-04-27T18:11:00.003+01:00

Grant Shapps has again stepped in to delay the demolition of the Welsh Streets in Liverpool. This saga has been dragging on now for seven years. So long in fact that you would be forgiven if you'd forgotten what the point of the demolition was in the first place. So here is Councillor Richard Kemp to explain. Councillor Kemp is the leader of the Liberal Democrats in local government and vice chair of the LGA, a councillor on Liverpool City council and vice chair of a housing association. He is by all accounts a highly respected figure in local government and housing circles. But he has, as one Liverpool resident put it to me last week, “got blood on his hands.” This is of course metaphorical blood. But the polarisation of opinion on housing in Liverpool runs so deep that it would make little difference if it were real blood. Cllr Kemp has not only instigated many of the housing clearance programmes in Liverpool he is actively in favour of continuing the policy of demolishing houses and the Welsh Streets is his next target. In a recent blog post he explains why.

It (housing market renewal demolition) was predicated on a fact – Liverpool has too many two up two down Victorian properties for which there would not be a market to the current extent even if they were modernised.

A worrying start. This isn't a fact, it's an opinion, and one that doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. In areas where homes were modernised such as Chimney Pot Park in Salford the demand has been huge.

Anyway he goes on : We actually went and asked a vital group of people a simple question in 1998, “Why did you move out of Liverpool?” The answer was complex but compelling. They were moving because our services were crap and the housing did not meet their aspirations. They wanted to live in 3 bed roomed detached and semi-detached homes in a nice clean area with a good school. We didn’t provide any of these things.

The comment about crap services is refreshingly honest, but the rest is bizarre. Is this not how cities are supposed to work? People move to the best housing they can afford. They aspire to better housing, and if they can afford it they later move out to semis in the suburbs. The fact people did so in Liverpool is entirely normal. This is not to say that the Welsh Streets were without problems, but it hardly justifys knocking them down. Had the Welsh streets had been left alone another generation of people would have followed. But the Welsh streets were not left alone. Instead the council consulted residents on whether they should be demolished. Cllr Kemp explains:

They (residents of the Welsh streets) overwhelmingly supported limited demolition. In the Welsh Streets for example after a 3 year consultation process 68% of local residents voted for a demolition programme and only 15% voted against. That’s democracy in action.

Note the word “limited” The consultation actually showed 338 against and only 97 in favour of the near total demolition of the Welsh Streets that is now proposed. It certainly isn’t democracy in action. But what would replace the demolished houses? Kemp explains:

In their place we would create demographically balanced housing with different types of accommodation and different tenures for different people at different times of their life. In other words we would build housing inside which communities could form and neighbourhoods would flourish.

Yet virtually no housing has been built to replace any of the houses that have been demolished in Liverpool. There are no plans for replacement houses in the Welsh streets. No subsidy to pay for new affordable housing. So what was it all for?

In Liverpool 8 if you brought up your children well, gave them a good education there was almost an inevitability that they would move out and take your grand children with them. In other words we had housing policies which by accident or design broke up families and communities because we allowed no flexibility of provision.

So the answer is to demolish the houses and move everybody out guaranteeing the community would be broken up?
Kemp's explanation shows the very strange thinking that led to this bizarre policy. On the one hand diagnosing real social problems and yet prescribing answers that only make things worse. Anyway it all ought to be academic now. Not only has the government stepped in to try and stop the demolition, they have withdrawn the funding that paid for the whole programme. This might sound bleak, but there is an answer, It's one I have already proposed to the council, and one I will explain in my next post.

The Budget and how the housing sector got it wrong

2011-03-23T17:24:00.004Z

The budget will no doubt grab headlines for the Chancellor’s neat little fiddle to petrol prices, but I’m more interested in what’s behind some similar footwork on new homes.

The budget introduces First Buy a £250million programme that it is claimed will help first time buyers buy homes. It does this by an equity share scheme that builds up enough capital to create a 25% deposit for a first time buyer. The cost is met partly by the government (10%) , partly by the housebuilder (10%) and partly by the buyer (5%). In this way a first time buyer who can only afford a deposit of 5% of the purchase price of a house can satisfy the lender’s requirement for a 25% deposit.

Commenting on this today, the housing sector is full of medical analogies. Richard Capie of the CIH on the Today programme this morning described it as “an adrenalin shot in the arm for the housebuilding industry which is still in intensive care.“

Campbell Robb at Shelter described it this afternoon as “sticking plaster on a broken leg” he went on “We now have a construction industry on its knees and the lowest levels of house building since the 1920s.”

This to me illustrates what is wrong. The housing sector has confused itself with the housebuilding industry. Every housing problem that is raised whether it be homelessness, overcrowding, poor living conditions or affordability the sector’s answer is “ we need to build more houses” Except the housing sector doesn’t actually build any homes. The housebuilding industry does. From the housebuilders point of view this is no doubt great news. They have had their business elevated to a moral necessity by organisations with the public goodwill of Shelter and the credibility of the CIH.

But few people stop to ask two important questions. Why is housebuilding so low? and if it were to magically accelerate would it really solve all the country’s housing problems?

The answer to the first is easy. Housebuilders aren’t building, because few people are buying. Housebuilding is just a business operating in a market. Right now what it produces is judged by the market to be too expensive, and by lenders to be too risky (because lenders judge houses to be overpriced) .What would any other business do? Obviously drop its prices. But the housebuilding industry sees itself as a special case, and the housing sector reinforces this belief. Instead they think it is the duty of the state to construct new ways for people to afford homes at high prices, and also its duty to take the risk of the inevitable house price drop away from lenders.

The answer to the second question is harder to answer. Let’s just say that a million new homes are built this year (ten times what is predicted). Would it solve lots of housing problems? Given that as I discussed a couple of weeks ago there is no overall housing shortage in this country, who would buy them and who would live in them? As the vast majority of the homes would be for private sale, it is fair to say they wouldn’t be bought by people in housing need. Perhaps there would be a trickle down effect. Perhaps the oversupply of houses would cause overall house prices to drop. All these things are possible. But we would inevitably end up with far more vacant homes (probably about a million more). I think it’s highly likely that homelessness, overcrowding, and poor living conditions would be largely unaffected, but arguably housing affordability might be improved.

So what’s really behind Firstbuy? The package is available to first time buyers who buy new homes. I don’t have figures, but the vast majority of first time buyers buy second hand houses. First Buy is therefore simply a form of subsidy to help the housebuilding industry. Campbell Robb said today “Today’s announcement will help less than one per cent of people struggling to get on the housing ladder, leaving them more likely to win the lottery than be helped through this small-scale scheme.” He may well moan about it now, but by lobbying on behalf of housebuilders for so long the housing sector can hardly complain when the government takes them at their word.

For Sale Stan Laurel's House

2011-03-21T16:25:00.000Z

The modest childhood homes of two of Britain’s best-known entertainers lie empty. But their fate appears very different.

Here’s Durham council on Stan Laurel’s empty childhood house “the Laurel link is vastly important for attracting tourists and generating money for the local economy.”

And here’s Liverpool council on Ringo star’s empty childhood house "Ringo Starr’s house has no historical significance demolition is the only option.”

It’s interesting to see that Durham council believe that the Laurel connection will lead to greater demand and a greater sale price for the house. We’ll see whether they’re right when the house goes under the auctioneer’s hammer next week. If they are right, and I’m sure they will be, it will be interesting to see whether Liverpool will seek to learn the lesson, I suspect they won’t.

More Homes Fewer Empty Buildings

2011-03-18T10:26:00.000Z

Policy Exchange is a think tank that is occasionally brilliant but sometimes bonkers. Who can forget their Cities Unlimited report from two years ago which advocated abandoning northern cities. It achieved the remarkable feat of uniting David Cameron and John Prescott in condemnation. Between them they described it as “barmy”, “the most insulting and ignorant policy I've ever heard” ,“Insane and complete rubbish”

But their latest report "More Homes Fewer Empty Buildings" for me falls into the brilliant category. In fact it is one of those ideas that is so simple you wonder why nobody has come up with it before. Allow people to convert empty commercial space into homes without the need for planning permission. At the moment changing the use of a building into a home requires "change of use" planning permission. Not only is applying for this a bit of a bureaucratic obstacle course, the chance of success is low. Council planning departments are keen to protect employment spaces. A reasonable an important function you might think. But they make no distinction between operating sites that are actually employing people and vacant ones that employ nobody and have little prospect of ever employing anybody again. The truth is the planning system cannot protect employment, that is a function of the economy, it tries to do so by protecting sites, but it is poor proxy that has knock on effects causing redundant offices and rows of boarded up shops. As the report points out, even in the most economically active part of the UK, the South East of England, commercial vacancy rates are running at 17%. The same part of the country that demand and need for housing outstrips supply most dramatically.

As the report says "We have a significant housing shortage at the same time that a large number of commercial properties are vacant or partly so. Not only is this a prime cause of urban blight, but the shortage of housing, combined with the current low rate of new house building, places a huge and potentially unsustainable burden on young people an family life."
The answer is elegantly simple. Commercial buildings that have been empty for more than a year should be allowed to convert into housing without change of use planning permission.

5 big housing lies and why the public doesn't buy the housing crisis

2011-02-25T12:49:00.001Z

Earlier this month I was honoured to be a guest of the CIH president at his annual dinner. This huge annual event takes place in the Natural History Museum in London. Tables of the great and good of the housing industry were assembled around the Brontosaurus skeleton and under the gaze of Charles Darwin’s statue. This is always a helpful prompt to speakers enabling them to make self-deprecating jokes about how old they are how their views have had to evolve.

This year the speakers were in fiery form. There was a general theme that public and the media were not taking the housing crisis seriously enough. “Wake up and listen to the profession about the country’s housing crisis” We were told. The messages followed the common orthodoxy of our profession. You’ve no doubt heard them too There are record levels of housing need, record levels of homelessness, a record under-supply of housing, the backlog in supply is increasing every year. The system is creaking at its seems, This is a time bomb set to explode, we must argue passionately for our industry. It was entirely honourable, but to me, strangely unmoving.

Last year I, along with 5 million others read the entertaining economics book Superfreakanomics. In it the authors; Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner take a deliberately mischievous look at how things really work. They take the cold facts and come up with unorthodox conclusions. One example considers how the law affects prostitution. They argue that the greater the law cracks down, the more profitable and the more widespread prostitution become. The argument works like this. If the police arrest prostitutes they reduce the supply. The remaining prostitutes can therefore raise their price, making it more lucrative attracting more women to become prostitutes. In other words the orthodoxy of how to deal with prostitution is not only incorrect it's counter productive.

Now I don’t for one moment doubt the genuine belief and commitment of people in the housing industry expressed with such zeal by the CIH president and other speakers at the dinner, but I did wonder what Levitt and Dubner might make of it all. In the absence of persuading them to take a look I decided to try myself. I looked up the data and was slightly surprised to see that almost all of the facts and truths expressed by our industry on a daily basis turn out to be … well untrue. Here they are with references:

Truth 1: There is an undersupply of housing: Untrue, in 2008 there were 22,398,000 dwellings and 21,731,000 households in England a surplus of 667,000 dwellings http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/table-102.xls

Truth 2: There is a growing shortfall in housing; Untrue, the growth in the number of dwellings in the UK has outpaced the growth in households every year since 1971 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/social_trends/st41-housing.pdf

Truth 3: There are 5 million people in housing need waiting for social housing; Untrue, there are 1.76 million households on council housing registers in England which equates to about 5 million people. But these aren’t waiting lists, many of the households that are on them are in housing need, but others are not, anybody can register and some register in several council areas. Housing registers are a measure of demand for social housing. They are not a measure of housing need. www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141488.xls

Truth 4: Homelessness is increasing: Untrue. Last year 40,000 households were accepted as being homeless by local authorities, 25% down on the previous year and a third of the number in 2003/4 www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141488.xls

Truth 5: Social housing is in decline: Untrue- there has not only been an increase in social housing every year, but since 2003/4 the rate of increase has gone up every year. Last year 33,120 new socially rented homes were added to the stock. http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/1406060.xls

Is this the reason that the country hasn’t woken up to the housing crisis?

This is not to say there isn't a housing crisis. Many people in this country live in completely unsatisfactory housing conditions. The housing system doesn’t work on all sorts of levels for people. I also acknowledge that although the indicators I have discussed show positive progress, it doesn't mean that progress can be sustained into the future with less public money. But surely what this says is that the housing industry is a success, it's making things better for people. Yes there's a lot more that needs to be done, but if we are going to get people at large to see housing as an issue of national importance we need to break out of the cosy consensus and stop pretending things are worse than they really are. What the industry is saying may not just be incorrect, it might also be counter productive. We shouldn't expect people to believe us if what we say isn't true.

Earning money the right way - a suggestion for councils

2011-02-22T14:21:00.001Z

” We want to make money out of it” , “We should have the money not them” , “We can’t afford to make loans” this was Councillor Mark Howell of South Cambridgeshire District council on the radio this morning. He and I were both guests on the very glamorous BBC radio Cambridgeshire breakfast show. Howell was there to talk about his council’s plan to get rid of the council tax discount it currently offers to owners of empty homes. An idea I fully support; the discount is a nonsense and does nothing to encourage landlords to make good use of their property. But Howell’s tone was dispiriting; apparently fixated on the money but seemingly uninterested in what the money could help the council achieve. I know councils are in really difficult times now. As a director of a small charity, believe me I know what it’s like to not know where the money is going to come from. But really! Howell and many others in local government, who I have heard make similar points over the last couple of weeks could do better than this. The purpose of councils lies in what they can do for their communities not how much money they can make.

Empty homes is in fact an area where the government is actually investing more money. £100 million new targeted funding, and rewards for homes returned to use through the New Homes Bonus. Councils need to be thinking about how they can use these funds creatively to really make a difference.

Here are three ideas. Bear in mind that properties returned to use will earn the council between £7,000 and £11,000 in New Homes Bonus rewards over a six year period. In addition the council would also start receiving council tax from the reoccupied property.

Kent County council operate a loan scheme for owners of empty property. It costs Kent about £2,700 in lost interest and administration for each home returned to use through the scheme. Other councils from around the country could set up a similar scheme or even ask to join Kent's.

There are homes that are currently not economically viable to bring back to use, even though there are lots of low income people who want to live in them. The council could make a small grant of say £5,000 available to the owner on condition that the property were let to somebody in housing need.

There are 40,000 odd empty council owned houses in England. The council could sell these at discount on condition that the purchaser lived in it as their sole home and renovated it to an agreed condition.

Of course all three of these ideas cost money, but crucially they all earn more than they cost. The more things like this the council does, the more it will earn and the more homes will be created for its community. If councils want to make money surely this is a better way to do it.

New Homes Bonus - it might just work

2011-02-20T22:54:00.003Z

There had been speculation that when the figures came out they would show that less than 100,000 new homes were built in England last year, but when it happened last Friday the government was spared that particular humiliation. 102,570 houses were built in 2010. It’s still the lowest number since 1923. Of course housebuilding reacts slowly to changes of policy, and the government is still safely in the territory of being able to blame it all on their predecessors. Last week they announced details of their New Homes Bonus scheme. This looks like it’s going to be the centrepiece of their housing supply policy, and if there are not more homes as a result of this; the government will have nobody else to blame.

The idea is simple, for each new home the council gets paid a reward equivalent to the council tax paid on the homes for six years, they get another bonus of £350 a year as well if the house is affordable. Not everybody is happy with this, Sean Spiers, director of CPRE said it’s bribery and it's possibly illegal. But legal or not, bribing councils is a well-proven way for governments to get what they want.

When the idea for New Homes Bonus first emerged early last year I must admit I had my reservations too. Governments have been struggling for years with how to deal with the poor supply of housing in the UK. They’ve have generally concluded that way to resolve it is to try and persuade housebuilders to build more houses. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out largely because the diagnosis was wrong. It’s not more new houses the country needs, it’s more low cost houses and they aren’t very profitable for the housebuilders to build. Instead incentives and pressure to build resulted in more houses but houses that people didn’t need or want.

But may be, just may be, New Homes Bonus might work. The reason for my optimism is it seems to be genuinely focussed on the problem, not just trying to push a chosen solution. Here’s how it works:

The council gets a bonus each year calculated on the net increase in homes. Homes can mean newly built houses, or empty properties returned to use. But if there isn’t really a demand or need for homes or the homes that get built are rubbish and nobody wants to live in them, the benefit is pretty short lived. If there is an increase in vacancy levels the number of newly emptied homes are discounted off the total of new homes. So for example a borough sees 1,000 new homes built during the year, but vacancy levels go up by 800, will only get rewarded for 200 new homes.

The long-term impact of this should be to change local authorities' view of housing supply. Hopefully the'll concluded that it'll be no use getting homes built if nobody lives in them. And hopefully they'll see it’ll be doubly beneficial to get empty homes into use (they’ll get a reward for each one and won’t loose potential reward on new build homes). And also it won’t matter who brings empty homes into use. This system doesn’t reward council activity; it rewards the outcome. Hopefully this will mean that councils will start to encourage people to do up empty properties rather than thinking that it only counts if they do it all themselves.

In other words the outcome of the New Homes Bonus should be to encourage inhabited homes, not simply housebuilding. So when this system is judged in a few years time, how will we know whether it has worked? One sign of success would be that it doesn’t matter anymore what the housebuilding rate is. It’s how many homes get occupied.

It's empty homes, not spare rooms, that can solve our housing crisis

2011-01-13T10:41:00.001Z

George Monbiot wrote an intruiging article in the Guardian last week claiming that underoccupation was the big housing problem that really needed to be resolved. The Guardian have been good enough to publish my response today. Here it is in full:

George Monbiot describes under-occupation of housing as our second housing crisis, after the shortfall in supply, and calls for a fight “It needs to be researched, debated, fought over. It needs to turn political” he says. (let’s take the housing fight to owners with empty spare rooms – Guardian 4^th January) his idea might fit with an ideology that it’s all the middle class’s fault, but the real opportunities for better use of housing lie in using empty buildings not spare rooms.

Monbiot’s contention is that “ a better distribution of housing we have already built” could help ease the housing crisis. He goes on to explain that the reason you’ve never heard about this before is a political conspiracy to keep it from us. “You’ll seldom hear a squeak about it in the press, in parliament, in government departments or even in the voluntary sector. Given its political sensitivity, perhaps that’s not surprising” he says.

But in all this talk of wasted space Monbit fails to mention that across the UK there are close to a million empty homes, and enough abandoned commercial buildings that could be readily converted into half a million new dwellings. In our view these have far greater potential to create homes than filling up spare rooms in under-occupied homes. There is detailed evidence to show that numbers of empty homes have increased over recent years. Under-occupation has too, but not to the extent Monbiot claims. Relying on one figure in a report on energy use, Monbiot says that “between 2003 and 2008 there was a 45% increase in the number of under-occupied homes in England” But the English House Condition Survey (p16) shows an increase from 31% in 1995/6 to 37% in 2008/9.

Of the UK’s million empty homes, about half are long-term vacant with no plans for reoccupation. Amazingly thousands of them are boarded up in preparation for demolition with no replacements planned. We think that small incentives for renovation and reoccupation, and a reversal of some of the demolition programmes are the most cost effective way of providing new housing. Surveys have shown that on average, empty homes need only £10,000 of investment to get them occupied again, compared to £90,000 of subsidy to get a new social home built. It’s greener too. Research we carried out recently showed that the refurbishment of derelict buildings creates far lower carbon emissions than building new homes.

But the main reason we should concentrate our energy on getting empty buildings and not empty rooms into use is that empty homes are tangible and there is track record in creating homes from them. Dealing with under-occupation is a naked promise.

Neither the problem, nor the outcome of tackling it, are as great as they first appear. Underocuupation is calculated using the government’s “bedroom standard” this notionally “allocates” bedrooms to people in each household. Couples and single people over 21 get a bedroom; younger people notionally share two to a room. If after this hypothetical family rearranging, there are two or more bedrooms left the home is deemed to be under-occupied. So a family of four living in a four-bedroom house would be under-occupying, even if it consisted of a couple sharing a bedroom and two children each with their own bedroom plus a spare bedroom.

To most people living in this situation I doubt it feels like a problem that needs fixing. And it is hard to think of a policy, short of coercion, that would persuade them to take in lodgers. Living next to an empty home on the other hand is a different matter. Unmanaged and often out of control they can quickly become magnets for fly tipping, vandalism and occasionally arson. In some areas of the country vacancy has become a vicious circle causing neighbourhoods to empty out as they decline.

So investment in bringing empty homes into use is not only a very cost effective way of creating more homes, it helps regenerate neighbourhoods too. We are pleased to see that the government has made some funding available, and is considering giving incentives to communities for bringing homes back into use. However the funding is only enough to refurbish three thousand empty homes nationally. To really create a flow of new homes it needs to be aligned to incentives for owners such as targeted reductions in VAT on refurbishment costs and an end to the barmy idea of giving council tax discounts for houses left empty. With these changes not only would many owners bring their empty homes into use, the rationale for demolishing empty houses would be replaced with a cogency to reuse them.

When so few houses are being built it is tempting to think that if everybody could just budge up a bit we could fit millions of households into peoples homes and solve the housing crisis. It’s probably true that ideas Monbiot suggests would have some marginal benefit, but we believe far greater rewards will arise from investing the same energy and resources into getting more empty homes back into use and helping solve the real housing crisis.

Middle England and the Law against Squatting

2011-01-07T17:30:00.002Z

There are a few phrases in the language of middle England, the mere mention of which causes the red mist to fall. European integration is one such phrase, benefit claimant another, softly softly policing yet another but if you want one to really annoy people the word “squatter” really sends middle England completely potty. It implies everything it stands against: something for nothing, scroungers jumping the queue getting things for free that they haven’t worked for. So just imagine if all of these phrases can be thrown together into one story. It happened today in the Daily Telegraph . A Latvian travels 1,500 miles to squat in a mansion in London because he’s heard how soft this country is on squatters. He did himself no favours by saying, “I’m going to stay round here. It’s great, it’s free and I don’t have to pay rent like a normal person.”
Saying "I knew before I came that people live in squats and have legal protection. It’s easy here.” wasn’t great, or particualrly accurate, either.

The BBC are onto the story now and I’ve just been interviewd for the evening news. The question that this has raised for them is, should squatting be banned? Reading the Telegraph you might quite reasonably answer yes. But look at it another way. The law already provides a very simple easy way for property owners to remove squatters. All you have to do, as the owner, is go to court, as the owner has done in this case, and you are virtually guarrenteed to get an order that tells the squatters to go. You can choose to give them a month or 24 hours notice. After that, if the squatters stay they are breaking the law. So what needs changing? should the state really take away the responsibility from the property owner and ask the police to deal with it instead? If you think that a property owner should take responsibility for securing their own empty property and be responsible for managing it, the law should stay exactly as it is.

As for that word, middle England may be interested to know the word squatter has the same origin as a word they will be much more comfortable with: cottage. Both derive from Cotter, an ancient word meaning a subsistence farmer.

What's so Special About This House

2011-01-05T17:32:00.004Z

What’s so special about this house? Not much you might think it's an ordinary work-a-day terraced house much like millions of others across England. Empty of course, but thousands are. Whether this house is special or not is a matter of hot debate. But regardless, something is odd. This ordinary little house is causing so much interest that Ladbrokes have opened a book over its future.

In case you haven’t seen the news over the last week this is 9 Madryn Street in the Welsh Streets Liverpool L8. It is special because for a short while seventy years ago it was the home of Ringo Starr the least celebrated member of the most celebrated band in history. And the reason Ladbrokes are taking an interest is because the house has the misfortune to sit within an area of four hundred houses that are due for demolition. Or at least they were until housing minister Grant Shapps dramatically intervened last week.

The Welsh Streets are built on a ladder pattern in inner south Liverpool. The roads apparently take their names from place names in Wales (although I’ve never heard of anywhere called Madryn) For most of their history they provided decent homes for people and as recently as 2005 were more or less fully occupied. There were problems, this has never been a wealthy area and a hundred years of wear and tear take their toll. Thirty years ago the Toxteth riots took place a few hundred yards away, and investment was promised. In fact it was another twenty years before Liverpool Council started consulting on the future of these roads. The Government had just introduced its Housing Market Renewal Programme and here it seemed was the source of the funding and the vehicle for renewal. The 2005 consultation focused on one question- should the houses be demolished?. As these interviews with residents ,by the ever brilliant Ciara Leeming, show, some people thought so and some were against. The council’s paperwork, which I have in front of me, shows roughly a third in favour of demolition and two thirds against. In Madryn Street itself the split was 35 against and 1 in favour of demolition. But inexplicably the council decided to press on with the demolition option and claim that a majority were in favour.

As is so often the way with housing regeneration it takes years for decisions to be turned into action. Like an unwanted nag in the knackers yard the Welsh Streets were left to haemorrhage residents until today just two or three people remain. Last September, five years on from the demolition decision, I took what I thought would be my last sight of the houses. The bulldozers were set to roll in October. But they never came.

A last minute, and highly effective campaign from local campaign groups, SAVE Britain’s Heritage , and Beatles fans appears to given the houses at least a temporary reprieve. SAVE asked English Heritage to list 9 Madryn Street, as it had done for the birthplaces of the other Beatles. It declined. Apparently poor Ringo isn’t famous enough. It recalls the time when in their Beatles pomp a journalist asked John Lennon whether Ringo was the best drummer in he world. “He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles” he quipped. Not to be beaten, SAVE issued a PROD a little known legal tool to request the secretary of state intervene to investigate why publicly owned homes are being left empty. The Secretary of State is Eric Pickles, but it was his housing minister Grant Shapps, never one to shy away from a populist cause, who responded. Commenting on the proposed demolition of 9 Madryn Street he said “It’s for the nation to make a decision”. Presumably meaning localism is on hold while I decide on behalf of the nation. 'Many people consider the birthplace of the drummer in the world's most famous band to be a culturally important building,' he added, presumably meaning I’ve already decided. And in case you were in any doubt he went on to say: “There are some concerns about the way the whole demolition programme is working .. this might not be the right way forward.”

So to go back to my original question; what’s so special about this house? The answer is, it may have brought an end to the whole “demolition first” way the country tackles housing regeneration. And very welcome that is too. Of course poor Ringo, who famously ran down his place of birth on the Jonathan Ross show a couple of years ago has had nothing to say about it. He’s just been the populist peg on which this whole debate has been hung. But his role is not over. The next debate has to be how can we get these houses back into use. What better way of advertising them to potential residents than using the Beatles connection again, so I’m afraid your work is not yet done Ringo.

Three Remarkbale Announcements

2010-11-24T18:27:00.001Z

A few years ago I remember writing that you try in vain for years to get government to change policy on empty homes. And then just like waiting for the bus three announcements come along at once. Well it’s happened again. But this is where the bus analogy falls apart. Only one of the three buses are any use to you, but the three announcements made by the government this week are so important because when considered together they add up to something highly significant. So here they are:

Firstly last month in the Comprehensive spending review the government made £100 million available to bring empty homes into use. It will be part of the HCA’s affordability program. So it’s largely capital for renovating and bringing empty homes into affordable housing. Yes, we won’t actually see it until 2012, and yes I know it’s considerably less than the £2.5billion proposed by the Liberal Democrats in their election manifesto. But it’s a great deal more than the £3mllion spent nationally last year on empty homes. From schools to aircraft carriers I can see no other area of public spending which has received such an increase.

Secondly this week the government has proposed rewards (through the New Homes Bonus scheme) for local authorities to get empty homes into use. The mechanisms are still being worked out, and indeed this week’s announcement is a consultation paper. But take note; that the empty homes element is specifically referred to in the ministerial foreword. It even says that this could provide a way to fund the vital work councils do to get empty property into use. But the true significance comes when you see the third proposal.

The government proposed this week that empty homes returned to use should count towards housing supply targets (or aspirations as we should now call them!) in the same way as new homes. The notion might seem blindingly obvious, but previous governments have resisted it. The effect has been that work to bring homes into use has been regarded as of secondary importance to building new homes by many councils.

These proposals would mean that councils would have to consider empty homes and getting new homes built together. A good idea in itself; what’s the point of building new homes if there are already homes lying empty? You might ask. Certainly we’ve been asking that question for years. Now we have an answer. Not everybody will like this, but if councils get this wrong it will hit them in the wallet. For example under this proposal a council that gets a hundred new homes built, but also sees a hundred homes becoming empty will get no New Homes Bonus reward. A council that gets a hundred empty homes into use will earn lots of New Homes Bonus even if no new homes are built. This is a clever idea, it will mean councils will have to look at their existing housing stock instead of just trying to get more homes built. And when they need work out to get more homes they will find that housing associations are funded not just to build new homes, but they have £100million fund to apply to get empty homes into use too.

So this isn't really three seprate announcements, it adds up to something much more a real policy. Now they really don't come around very often.

A question on housing benefit

2010-11-10T16:20:00.003Z

Having just been asked for the third time this week whether I think changes in housing benefit (HB) will cause a national glut of empty homes, I'm not sure whether this is the most important question to ask, but I feel should tell you what I think. The question is based on an accumulating body of evidence that the planned cap on HB will price people on low incomes who rent their housing from private landlords out of their homes. This graphic from the Chartered Institute of Housing shows that over time they may be pushed out of London, then the South West and in 30 years time whole country will become too expensive for them. This begs a number of questions. But the one I have been asked to answer is: will it cause homes left in the wake to become empty? To which my answer is no…. well, maybe a bit. Here’s why.

The implication to the CIH’s model is that private landlords will turf out tenants on HB rather than drop the rent to a level that they can afford. It also assumes that rents will rise at a uniform 5% a year. The old adage is that all projections are wrong, and I’m quite sure this one will be. My first thought is that the private rental market is just that, a market. Rents are set by what people will pay, sop it’s never going to price itself out of business. In some areas, central London for example, I have little doubt that landlords will be able to find tenants not receiving HB who will pay the same rent. So few will see the need to drop their rents. In other areas landlords will have little choice. I spoke to one landlords from rural Durham recently who told me he could let houses to people on HB at double the rate he could let them on the open market. In neither case do I see much chance of vacancy increasing. In central London tenants will only be forced out if the landlord thinks he can let it somebody for higher rent; so no vacancy. In Durham the landlord is potentially faced with less rent or no rent. Most I would guess would opt for less. So no new vacancy.

However, I did say there might be a bit of extra vacancy. Here’s why: with lots of landlords forced to make decisions and lots of people having to move, there will be plenty of opportunity for cock-ups. Landlords are just people and on the whole people who have lots going on in their lives other than letting houses. An uncomfortable truth about much of the private rented housing let to people on HB is it’s rubbish. HB doesn’t take account of property condition, and so the incentive for a landlord to maintain it is less than if the tenant isn’t on HB. A landlord who moves out HB tenants to let on the open market may find that they are faced with a big refurbishment bill to get it up to scratch. The property is then empty and if the landlord can’t get it sorted out, it stays empty. In an ideal world a landlord foreseeing this problem may drop the rent and keep the HB tenant. But the world of cock-ups doesn’t include many landlords with foresight. In Durham a more serious problem may emerge. If HB is so much higher the market it suggests there isn’t much market. When this happens it isn’t impossible for landlords just to give up. It hasn’t happened for years. Perhaps because HB has artificially propped the market up, but there’s no reason why it could happen again in some areas.

Of course all of this avoids the really big problem here. HB changes will inevitably cause people on low incomes to move because they can no longer afford to pay their rent. The market will adjust to this, there won’t be swaths of vacant properties, but for some people here will be personal tragedies and hardship. Is this a price worth paying? Now there's a real question.

Squatting - you may be surpised what you think

2010-10-05T16:21:00.002+01:00

The Netherlands used to look a picture of harmony and tolerance but its liberal outlook is wearing a bit thin. The new coalition government is banning the Burqa, one of it’s party leaders is in court for promoting religious hatred. Even the tree in Amsterdam that sheltered Anne Frank has gone rotten and fallen over. But perhaps most significantly of all the government has outlawed squatting.

Nothing wrong with that you might think. Surely it should be illegal to squat other people’s houses anyway. Well perhaps, but it is legal in England and Wales and Dutch tolerance of squatting has actually been a very successful policy. The Netherlands has Europe’s lowest level of vacancy (0.3% compared to 3.5% in UK).

The simple idea in the Netherlands was that if an owner left a building empty for more than a year he lost the right to evict squatters. If the owner was intending to redevelop a building, demolish it, or sell it the last thing he needed was to have it full of squatters who had rights to stay. The effect was of course property owners did whatever they could to stop their property becoming empty, and if that failed, they did whatever they could to get their property back into use within a year.

A whole industry grew up to help. It provided a “guardian” service finding people who would live in empty properties to prevent them becoming squatted. Not only did the law minimise the number of empty properties, a by-product was to create a new sector of housing that was cheap and accessible. Figures suggest that nearly 1% of the Dutch population are now property guardians. The industry has spread beyond the Dutch borders and property guardian companies like Camelot and Ad-Hoc successfully operate in Belgium, Germany, France and the UK.

It is a truth that few dare speak here. But the risk of an empty property being squatted is a powerful motivator for the owner to get it into use. Whether you like the idea of squatting or not, it is probably true that it stops a lot of buildings being left empty. A system like the Dutch are now getting rid of, without doubt, creates an even stronger incentive still. There are mutterings on the backbenches of Westminster here that squatting should be banned across the UK too. Plenty of people will tell you about the harm squatting causes, much of which will be true. But before you agree to enthusiastically, ask the other question too. What good does it do? You may be surprised what you conclude.

For Art's Sake

2010-09-19T18:51:00.000+01:00

I’d have loved it if Banksy were making a point about the immorality of leaving homes empty. I don’t think it’s him. But somebody is. Whoever they are they have turned an empty house into an artwork contrasting the number of empty homes in the area to the number of homeless. Pots of imitation flowers now adorn the house, and in the front garden a cut out couple appear to be enjoying an alfresco meal. A notice board on the garden fence simply says Homeless 9,500 Empty Homes 7,600.

The house is one of several on Burntwood lane in Wandsworth belonging to the local health authority. All have sat empty for as long as I can remember. I lived near them fifteen years ago and they were empty then. Nothing has changed.

Over the years I have written to the health authority, to the council, and to the MP asking why these houses could not be used. Only the council bothered to reply and their answer was so wet they might as well have not troubled themselves. They said they didn’t want to put undue pressure on the health authority because they were considering closing the local hospital.

Wandsworth is an area with acute housing need, one of the highest affordability problems in the country and yes over 9,000 households on the council waiting list.

One might hope that this artwork might at least pull at some heartstrings in the health authority or the council. But apparently not, a rather sour faced council response said:

"We work closely with the police to combat graffiti and other forms of vandalism affecting our communities. The cost of cleaning up the damage caused is an enormous burden on local taxpayers. We aim to remove racist or obscene graffiti within 24 hours and other forms within three working days.” A great shame they're not so responsive about creating homes for those in need.

Say it With Flowers

2010-09-13T15:20:00.001+01:00

There are places in Liverpool that make your heart leap and others that make you want to weep. These two adjacent roads in Granby manage to do both at the same time. Granby is the very essence of a deprived community, on almost any indicator of poverty it does almost unbelievably badly. 94% of children living in poverty 70% of the resident Somali population are unemployed, cancer and heart disease rates are 250% of the national average. Why you might think would anybody want to live here? With over 11% of the houses long term empty, it might appear that they don’t. But nothing in Liverpool is ever simple. Problems have been simmering here for many years. 25 years ago they blew up. This is where the Toxteth riots took place. Last week, walking along these streets I was stopped by a life long resident. “This is their punishment for the riots” she said commenting on the row of bricked up vacant houses on her street “For daring to protest they’ve decided to grind the life out of this area.” She claimed that a deal between council and housing association meant that every house that becomes empty is bricked up rather than re-let. “We’re all getting old here” she said “in a few years we’ll all be gone, then they’ll come in and flatten all the houses.” It was enough to make grown man want to weep. But the resident’s response to the perceived war being waged against them was unexpected and extraordinary. Residents had painted the brieze blocks that replaced the windows on empty homes in Cairns Street and Beaconsfield Street. There were brightly painted curtains where windows had once been, a painted cat peeping out onto the road, butterflies, even a Tuscan castle. The front gardens of abandoned houses were neatly tended, along the length of the street every conceivable receptacle had been used as plant pots; car tyres, a water tank, a couple of old trailers, even a small chest of drawers overflowing with flowers. Most of the houses in these roads were empty, but none were unloved. In the circumstances where most communities would have given up, this one was showing a strength that truly made the heart leap.

Last Days of the Welsh Streets

2010-09-08T15:49:00.004+01:00

These are the last days of the Welsh Streets in Liverpool. The area was built in the 1880s by and for Welsh construction workers, with streets named after towns and villages in Wales they came from. Wynnstay, Voelas, Rhiwlas, Powis, Madryn, and Kinmel. In 2005 a decision was made by the council to demolish an area of 300 houses encompassing most of the Welsh Streets. In the last five years the houses have been systematically emptied out and acquired by Liverpool City Council; leaving what must be the largest area of empty houses in the country. Baring a last minute reprieve, the bulldozers are set to roll on October 14th. Yesterday, a warm late summers day I took what might be a last look.

Sows ears and silk purses

2010-09-02T13:21:00.000+01:00

It’s hard to believe it now, but in the 1970s when I grew up the glamour football team to support was Ipswich town. It happened to be my hometown club, but their support spread far and wide. The team was filled with well-mannered, clean-cut role-models like Paul Mariner, George Burley and Mick Mills. But if you were a bit rebellious and liked your footballers cut a bit rough, there was nobody better than Eric Lazenby Gates; a grizzled and aggressive forward who always managed to look a mess but play with astonishing skill. He was the type of man who even if you dressed him in a Saville Row dinner suit would somehow still look like a tramp.

When I was ten my parents paid for me to go on a summer football course, coached by Ipswich Town players. I found myself in a group coached by Gates. His thick Northeast accent proved too impenetrable for most of the boys, but with Geordies in the family I understood it perfectly. So did my parents who asked me to be moved into another group to get away from the torrent of smutty jokes and filthy language that were part of his coaching style.

Eric Gates disappeared back to the North East with a transfer to Sunderland a few years later and for many years I thought nothing more of him. That was until earlier this week when I found myself outside the house he was brought up in, in the ex colliery town of Ferryhill in county Durham.

Ferryhill has the curse that has befallen many so-called regeneration hot spots. Its renaissance has been put-off or petered-out. The plans were ambitious. In 2006 a ten year plan was announced by the council that would have seen 400 hundred ex miners cottages demolished and hundreds of new homes built in their place. The works started with the flattening of a chunk of houses in streets named after the great industrial men of their day Stephenson, Watt and Faraday. But then nothing, the money ran out and with the 2008 market crash, investment slipped away. Far from regenerating the area, the talk of demolition caused, those that could, to move away. Today Gates’ house stands among many others empty and forlorn overlooking a few acres of wasteland. There is no plan B for Ferryhill, or indeed the many other similar areas where ambitious renewal plans have stalled or been shelved half way through. As we await the Comprehensive Spending Review, there seems little prospect that help will come from elsewhere, or that budgets will be replenished to enable stalled regeneration plans to start up again. The age of demolition and rebuild is, for now at least, over.

But all should not be lost. These houses could be homes again. Creative thinking like the approaches used in Salford or Anfield can remodel terraced housing and make it appealing and attractive to people looking for homes. Regenerating an area doesn’t have to mean flattening it and starting again. The great news for places like Ferryhill is this approach is cheaper and therefore more financially viable than the plans that have been abandoned. Places can reinvent themselves, just like people. Eric Gates today earns his living travelling around the Northeast as an after dinner speaker , dressed no-doubt in a Saville row dinner suit.

Last Chance to Save the Welsh Streets

2010-08-23T11:00:00.000+01:00

I'm posting this message on behalf of the Welsh Streets Home Group. They are challenging the imminent demolition of the the area of Victorian terraces, the former home of Ringo Star, known as theWelsh Streets in Liverpool. If you want to see these houses saved, this may be your last chance please write to the council by Wednesday. See instructions below:

You may be aware that Liverpool City Council have issued Liverpool residents Prior Notice that they plan to demolish 400 houses in the Welsh Streets. It featured in the media last week as Ringo Stars birthplace is involved. We want to let you know that the Council have invited responses to the Prior Notice of Demolition . If the council receive enough responses the proposal will be referred to a full planning committee and not decided by an individual officer. Your efforts could make a difference - for residents in Kelvin Grove who are not yet being bulldozed and to others living next to the demolition of a huge site.

Bulldozing is due to start on 13th September in three weeks time. Currently, the council proposal for how the houses will be demolished is vague. It could damage the health and security of residents surrounding the area. Responses to the Councils Proposal have to be received by the Council by 5 pm on Wednesday 25th August. Next week.

Planning law states that where a Prior Notice has been issued for consultation, only two issues will be considered. These are:
1) the proposed method of demolition and
2)details of the proposed restoration of the site.

You can read it yourself at Millennium House or look at the Planning on the council web-site and put ref. number 10pm/1551 into the navigator. We have a copy you can see at no.30 Kelvin Grove where there will be an open letter writing session this Sunday evening at 6pm. Letters will also be written between 3 and 5 at the Nerve Show in old Rapid Paint shop on Leece St if you want to come along and do a letter or help others do one.

Having looked at the proposal at the Planning Office and with a volunteer from Planning Aid, some serious problems have been noticed. These are:

The proposed method of demolition is given as hand/machine. This lacks the detail normally expected, which would state which machines would be used for which tasks, e.g. ball and chain, or a more careful and considered approach.

A method statement covering the health and safety of the workers and the public would also be included in the application and currently there is none.

It is stated that rubble will be dumped on a licensed tip when the authorities said previously it would be recycled for road-building.

There is no information about how gable ends of two blocks of houses left standing will be finished to keep them safe for occupants and the public and attractive for the community.

Demolition would leave a large empty patch of land ( from Kinmel Street to Kelvin Grove) to be covered with soil, fertiliser and grass-seed. No information is given in the proposal regarding the capping of sewers to reduce problems with rats, or other pests.

It appears from details given in the drawings that low metal hoop barriers will enclose each block of ex-houses. These barriers lack the strength to withstand being pushed over by vehicles so fly-tipping in these areas may be a risk.

The application shows palisade fencing will surround the site but no drawings of the fencing are supplied.

Despite the palisade fencing back gardens, sewers and drains of Kelvin Grove will be inadequately protected, creating a public health hazard & security issues for residents remaining in the even numbered side of the street.

Practicalities of living in or near a demolition zone such as dust suppression measures, working hours of heavy machines and noise pollution are not addressed.

We have also been advised that objections to this proposal would influence decisions regarding the future of Kelvin Grove which remains under threat of CPO and demolition.

If you want to help, please put your own version of these comments into a letter.

YOU MUST PLEASE Quote the Planning Application Reference 10PM/1551

Include a request to have the matter decided by full planning committee.

Ask for a receipt or acknowledgement of your letter.

ALL LETTERS SHOULD ARRIVE BY 5PM ON WEDNESDAY 25TH AUGUST

It does not have to be a long letter or include all of these points .
You do not have to live in the area to be concerned about it.
If you miss the deadline send a letter anyway it all adds up.

PLEASE SEND A COPY of YOUR LETTER TO : Nina Jones, Chair Welsh Streets Home Group, 39 Kelvin Grove, L8
or by email welshstreetshomegroup@googlemail.com

Please note that duplicate letters, letters with multiple signatures or petitions will be ignored by the Council. If you just copy and paste things you have read here, the letter wont count. Try to find a way of writing your letter that makes it different.

if its too late to post deliver by hand to Sherridan Scott, Development Control Division, Millennium House, 60 Victoria Street, Liverpool,L1 6JF.

ask for a dated receipt when you hand it in

by post to Liverpool City Council, Regeneration, Planning Department, Municipal Buildings, Dale Street, Liverpool, L2 2DH, to Liverpool City Councils planning department.

via email to planningandbuildingcontrol@liverpool.gov.uk or Sheridan.Scott@liverpool.gov.uk

please include your postal address on an e-mail letter.

Thank Your for you support now and in the past. We are deeply disappointed Liverpool City Council have failed to consider alternatives to demolition. They seem to be rushing into an irreversible action which pre-empts CPO and redevelopment decisions in a wider area. It is further seen as premature in advance of any redevelopment proposals being brought forward.
P.S. There are currently 13,500 tined up houses in the city all emptied at public expense. Meanwhile 23k people are awaiting homes. If you feel the cheapest, fastest and most eco friendly way of alleviating the housing crisis is to renovate not demolish you might like to add a note to this effect in your letter.

Writing a letter could have a material benefit for streets like Kelvin Grove which remains under threat but are not involved in next months bulldozing because the residents have refused to leave . The Welsh Streets Home Group will continue to campaign for Kelvin Grove and hope for your ongoing support. Sorry for the tight timescale we were on holiday when the council sent their Prior Notice out.

For help writing your letter , to volunteer or donate to the campaign please e-mail us welshstreetshomegroup@googlemail.com

kind regards

The Welsh Streets Home Group Committee and Supporters

Sir Bob Kerslake Interview on Empty Homes

2010-08-12T15:11:00.000+01:00

If you don't work in the housing or regeneration fields I quite expect this won't get your pulse racing. But for those of us who do, having Sir Bob Kerslake the Chief Executive of the Homes and Communities Agency speaking exclusively on why he thinks getting empty homes into use is quite a coup. Great that he's engaged, but frustrating he couldn't see the answer to his last question should have been that empty homes provide homes at lower cost. This interview was carried out by GovToday Editor, Scott Buckler earier this month.

Could you tell me how the HCA are working to maximise the use of empty homes?
The first thing to say is that the empty homes scheme is a crucial part of our housing and regeneration strategy. The HCA have put a significant amount of funding into empty homes, in the region of 19 million pounds to refurbish over 550 empty homes.
We have also funded major estate transformations which allows us to tackle empty council houses on a much bigger scale.
Other examples of where our investment is used proactively in dealing with empty homes can be found in our investment provided for HMR Pathfinders that focuses on dealing with low demand and abandoned stock while Decent Homes funding helps to keep local authority stock well maintained and combats the stock becoming difficult to let.
Alongside the funding we give a lot of support to local authorities to become effective in tackling the issue of empty homes.
We are, through our skills and knowledge team, supporting programmes that share expertise with local authorities across the country.
In summary, tackling the problem of empty homes can be achieved by a combination of investment through our big programmes and sharing best practice and knowledge from local authorities who have managed to tackle the problem head on with success.

Do you believe there is a private/public partnership model which could be used to reinvigorate the market for empty homes?
I think there is potential to work with the private sector, but when you look at the problem with empty homes there are two key areas, one being the local authority side, which I must say has brought down the number of empty homes in recent years and the private rented sector.
The major problem here seems to be the owners who currently may own a small number of properties. The task is how you can work with the private owners more efficiently; this may mean selling of the houses to local authorities.

What challenges are Local Authorities facing when trying to tackle issues on empty homes?
Local Authorities are facing some tough challenges when it comes to dealing with empty homes. What you tend to find is that once the houses become empty they stay empty for some time, the challenge Authorities have is dealing with landlords who may not have the skills or financial capability of bringing the houses up to the standard they require.
We’re seeing a high concentration in the North West of empty homes, where supply outweighs demand. It can be labour intensive for authorities to get empty homes back into use, so we tend to target our funding into areas across the UK where we can see best value for investment at a quicker rate of supply.

What role does empty homes play in the HCA’s approach to housing and regeneration?
The role empty homes plays in the Homes and Communities Agency housing and regeneration plans is about supply. It is about making more houses available, though it is also about estate renewal and market renewal whilst tackling low demand or low stock. So we are bringing empty houses into stock, but also regenerating communities by removing abandoned and run down housing.
As part of the local investment planning process, we are working with local authorities and partners to support the development and implementation of comprehensive strategies to maximise the use of empty homes.

What progress is being made on Kickstart and how is the HCA dealing with less funding to support housing, especially affordable housing?
I have to say Kickstart has been positively received; with the first schemes now coming to completion. We have a few remaining schemes left to fund, however the biggest task is to see through the delivery of these schemes, but I am in no doubt Kickstart has stimulated the housing market across the UK.

How do you respond to the recent announcement by the NHF who say that up to 500,000 people will be added to the social housing waiting list if the government go ahead with their 40 per cent cuts into housing?
There is no question about the high level of demand for Housing, especially social housing. The challenge we now face at the HCA following our reduced funding is delivering the maximum amount of housing with a lot less funding. The only way this can be achieved is to find alternative and less costly ways of delivering affordable housing, we need to engage with housing associations, contractors and authorities more to ensure we deliver value for money for both the buyer and the delivery authority.

BPF on empty homes and the end of tenancies for life

2010-08-05T16:59:00.000+01:00

Thank you to British Property Federation's Chief Executive, Liz Peace. Who intervened on the story in the Independent and others about the end of council tenancies for life. She made the excelent point that the underlying problem was not enough housing and said:
"Renovating empty homes is an opportunity for the government to get people of housing waiting lists and into good as new homes.Awarding renovation grants will remove eyesores from the local community and rectify lost incomes for the owner and surrounding landlords. It is a win-win situation for the owner of empty properties and the campaign to recycle existing housing stock."With the upcoming comprehensive spending review we can expect local authority funding to be cut however the need to supply new homes doesn't go away, renovating empty homes is a certain way of providing homes."

Resources or resourcefulness

2010-08-05T15:53:00.001+01:00

First of all a big thank you to everybody who has contributed to the empty homes debate on the Homes and Communities Agency website. There are now over 100 comments from people involved or affected, it’s still open for comments until the end of the month.

I’m really inspired by some of the ideas here Jim Overbury’s Private EDMO idea. Using the process, but not the force of the EDMO legislation to get homes into use with the owner’s agreement. Emma Edghill’s idea about working with the YMCA to find homeless people who can work on renovating vacant properties. Gary Kirk’s ideas around local authorities pooling resources. But there are a lot of requests from local authorities here that could be summarised as “give us more money”. One contributor was even as bold as to say he wanted cash cash cash!

Away form this debate I’ve also been approached by a number of people asking that we lobby the government for more money for local authorities. I will certainly campaign for good ideas to be properly financed but I’m afraid I won’t be lobbying for cash cash cash. Here’s why:
The coalition has made it quite clear that its major priority is deficit reduction. There is going to be less not more money. Arguing for the opposite is pointless.
I have seen many many empty homes innitatives and if there is a relationship between effectiveness and resources it is that those with least money do best. Some of the best-resourced initiatives I have seen have been jaw droppingly wasteful.
The factor that is most commonly associated with success is not resources but resourcefulness. I am thinking of Jenny Wood from Harrogate council going round to young building apprentices and kicking them out of bed in the morning to get them on site renovating empty homes. I am thinking of Liz Daykin in South Derbyshire advertising empty properties on her council website as a free estate agency service to help owners sell properties that estate agents didn’t want.

These actions weren’t dependent on large amounts of money, but they took imitative and an understanding of what the problem was that needed fixing. We need more of that, and where there are ideas and where there is success I will be more than happy to argue for them to be properly funded.

This could really make things better

2010-07-05T16:31:00.003+01:00

It doesn’t happen that often, but there are moments when it is possible to really change things for the better. In amongst the bleak public spending news, it may surprise you to hear that one such moment is upon us. Before the politicians go home for the summer we are calling on the government to say what it is going to do to fulfil its commitment on empty homes. And we’re asking you to say what you think too.

In May the coalition government said "We will explore a range of measures to bring empty homes into use."

We know that the work is underway. Officials are exploring measures now. What they conclude and what the government decides will either be the most significant moment for years, or a squandered opportunity for helping create homes out of empty property. Of course we want it to be the former. In a dream scenario here’s what could happen:

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) changes grant rules giving housing associations a real incentive to buy and refurbish empty homes.
The government confirms funding, and for the first time in years housing associations en-masse start purchase and repair and rehab schemes creating new affordable homes out of empty property.
The HCA gives greater flexibility so that homelessness charities and other community groups can refurbish empty homes too. Hundreds of new not-for- profit schemes start
The Government helps local authorities to act by rewarding them for getting long-term empty homes returned to use. Councils start realising the true value of reusing vacant homes and increase the help they offer to property owners.
The Government and public sector landlords open up their records on vacant property and agree to transfer their own surplus vacant properties to local communities for them to bring back into use. They give powers to the public to force the sale where the public sector drags its feet.

These actions would make a stunning difference enabling new homes to spring up out of empty buildings. It’s achievable and it’s affordable. But we need the government to act.

Next week you can have your say. The HCA debate “how do we maximise the use of empty homes?” starts on 12th July. Please take part. Watch the videos, and leave your comments and ideas here. It could really help make things better.

Information on empty homes - It's bad for your mental health

2010-07-02T14:20:00.001+01:00

The government is, according to Eric Pickles “committed to transparency”. Good! It has not always been so. Back when we I started this blog in 2006 access to information about vacant property was an issue I wrote about frequently because I thought it was being handled so badly. In one bizarre case we dealt with, a local authority denied a man information about empty homes because they thought, to give it to him, would affect his mental health! Judging by his reaction I think denying it to him had a worse effect.

We no longer seem to have ludicrous cases like that, but the problem is not resolved. Here’s why it matters:

We know central and local government have detailed data on all the vacant properties in this country. They know where they are, how long they have been empty, and who owns them. We also know that there are many resourceful people who can make use of those properties, by buying, renting, or developing them. It is surely obvious that if the resourceful people know where the properties are they are more likely to be able to do something about them. This principle is not novel or new it already happens for big development sites. Just look at the Surplus Land register, and the National Land Use database. These databases encourage big developers to make use of both public and privately owned vacant land by publishing details about it.

It works. So why not apply the same principle to vacant homes? Back in 2007 I spent a day in the Information Tribunal giving evidence on a case that involved this principle. The local government answer given in that case seemed to be people can’t be trusted. The thinking might be summarised as: telling big developers about vacant property is fine, but ordinary people? No way! They might do bad things like smash the house up, set fire to it, or fill it full of rowdy squatters. Best to be cautious and not tell anybody.

Of course there are some risks and some legal issues to disclosing information, but these can be managed, and indeed already are for the vacant land databases.

The trouble is, trustworthy or not, big developers are no longer buying land, and it is becoming obvious that if housing development is going to continue we will need many more small developments on small sites carried out by small developers and resourceful people.

It’s time to look at this again. Let’s be transparent about empty homes and give resourceful people what they need to turn the vacant properties back into homes.

Building Houses on Old Kent Road

2010-06-15T16:29:00.002+01:00

When Charles Darrow invented the Monopoly board game. He stuck this area at cheapest end of the board. Not much has changed. The Heygate estate in Elephant and Castle takes up that vast area between Walworth Road and Old Kent Road. It is one of the poorest areas in London. In the early 1990s I was called up to jury service at a trial for a series of people that had been arrested at a crack house on this estate. It wasn’t a comfortable experience. The trial revealed to me a troubled and frightening place that was failing to do anything more than keep the weather off the people who lived there. No doubt over the years many people tried to create a viable community here, but in the late 1990s the council decided it was beyond hope. The estate and the hideous neighbouring pink shopping centre were scheduled for demolition and replacement with new housing and shops. It sounded like a good idea.

But this is a big place. And Southwark is not a fleet footed council. It took ten years to find a developer prepared to take it on. And several years more to negotiate with partners over the road layout, access to underground stations and the like.

Four years later nearly all the people have gone. The estate was emptied (or decanted as housing people like to call it) the bulldozers were ready to roll. Plans were readied for replacement homes. Something was going to happen.

But when I visited yesterday it was silent. 1000 empty flats and not a sign of a builder. The Heygate like many other big housing regeneration project ran into trouble with falling house prices in 2008. The projected income from sales of new homes no longer added up. The development ground to a halt. Like many other stalled projects there was hope that it would be bailed out by generous government grants. After all down the road the Aylesbury estate redevelopment was salvaged by a whopping £42 million kick start grant last year. But no such luck for the Heygate a few weeks ago the unallocated funding in the Kick start programme was cut and doubt thrown over whether similar funding will made available again. The Heygate is just one estate. But there are scores of them around the country stalled, empty and unviable. Some doubt whether bailing out big projects like this is a good idea anyway. But it’s an academic discussion now.

For years we’ve been told not to worry about the thousands of vacant flats and houses that are in regeneration schemes. “They’re all the process of development,” we were told. But they’re not now. The process and the development have both stopped. Somehow we have to find a way to turn these places back into homes.

In the board game, if you play your cards right it’s easy and cheap to build houses and hotels on Old Kent Road. In reality it’s proving much more difficult.

Five things the government should do about empty homes

2010-06-09T12:40:00.003+01:00

Zac Goldsmith was kind enough to name check the Empty Homes Agency on the Today programme this morning. He suggested that instead of “garden grabbing” which the government announced it would be restricting , “there are a lot of empty homes lets find ways of incentivising getting them back into use”

All very encouraging. Zac Goldsmith is of course not a member of the government (yet) but this is just the latest in a number of suggestions by people in and around the government that they will introduce measures to deal with empty homes soon. I met Grant Shapps last week and he said nothing to dispel the belief. But what should they do? Here’s what I think

1. Change grant rules to give housing associations a real incentive to buy and refurbish empty homes, and give greater flexibility so that homelessness charities and other community groups can refurbish empty homes too.

2. Government and public sector landlords should hand over surplus properties to local communities for them to bring back into use. Councils should be encouraged to do the same.

3. Give homeowners incentive to refurbish their own empty homes by reducing VAT rates on refurbishment to 5%. It is particularly important that special provision is made for refurbishment if the overall VAT rate rises.

4. Councils should be encouraged to act by extending the government’s proposed council tax incentive scheme (which rewards councils for getting homes built) to long-term empty homes returned to use.

5. Keep council powers including Empty Dwelling management orders. Without them council’s effectiveness is reduced. We agree that they should be amended but please don’t repeal them.

It's Not Difficult

2010-05-28T10:53:00.005+01:00

I think I’d rather be told straight “You’re wrong!” But ours is not the kind of issue that promotes outright opposition. The strongest resistance we normally get goes something like this “Of course I agree that bringing empty homes into use is a good idea, but in practice it’s just too difficult.”

It’s an annoying put down because it would be petulant to get cross in response. But that doesn’t mean I agree.

These words most commonly come from the lips of local authority councillors or people running housing associations. What it generally means is that they know they have to create more homes, but the way they know how to do it is to do a deal with a developer who is building a large new housing development. The skills and knowledge you need to pull off deals like this are not to be sniffed at. Many housing associations are very good at it. And it works – or at least it did.

What it also implies is the skills they used to have to negotiate the purchase of individual houses and the skills to renovate them are no longer needed.

But now housing associations have a problem. Last year just 118,000 homes were built in this country – half the government’s target. That’s half the number of potential deals they need; and unless millions of pounds of taxpayers money is poured in, half the number of new social homes.

Now lets look at a different type of housing supplier; a private landlord. Between them private landlords provide about the same amount of housing as councils and housing associations. Very few try to do deals with developers and hardly any build new homes. Where most acquire property is through buying existing second-hand homes. Visit a property auction house and you will see most that homes are bought by private landlords, what’s more most of those they buy have vacant possession and need to be improved before they can be let. Private landlords it seems still have the skills to buy and renovate empty property.

Now, of course, private landlords operate on a different scale to councils or housing associations. A recent ARLA survey showed the average private landlord owned seven properties. The National Housing Federation’s latest figures show that the average housing association has more than 2,000 properties. But if bringing an empty home into use isn’t too difficult for a landlord who owns a handful of property, there’s no rational reason why it should be too difficult for a landlord who owns thousands. The housing market has changed, and if social housing is going to keep pace it needs to borrow the skills of private landlords. Bringing empty homes really is a good idea, and it’s a highly viable way of creating new housing. It’s only too difficult if you don’t know how to do it.

Government Announcement on Empty Homes

2010-05-20T12:07:00.001+01:00

My optimism yesterday, was not misplaced. Today the government has published the full coalition agreement. You can see it here. In it is this very encouraging commitment “We will explore a range of measures to bring empty homes into use.”

What does all this mean for housing?

2010-05-19T17:26:00.003+01:00

The housing business is moaning and groaning. The housing press is sounding downbeat too. Why? Apparently our new government hasn’t had much to say on housing. It barely mentioned the subject in the coalition agreement and it has downgraded the housing minister post so the incumbent will no longer attend cabinet. Does this matter? and what do we know about the government’s willingness to do anything about getting empty homes into use? I thought it time to have a look. Firstly lets have a look at the cast:

The Cabinet Minister in charge of local government, communities and housing is Eric Pickles a man who led Bradford Council in the early 1990s and will undoubtedly be an influential member of the government. Tim Williams says that Pickles’ experience is a double-edged sword for a man who will unquestionably wield it to the budget. He knows what he’s doing, but on the other hand may be too familiar with local government, and knows where the bodies are buried. It strikes me that these are both commendations for somebody who is in charge. Either way Pickles doesn’t look like a man to be messed with. When Hazel Blears was given this job a couple of years ago, there was an air of levity amongst commentators with few resisting the temptation to talk about her size. This time nobody has dared mention Mr Pickle’s size!

Grant Shapps has the distinction on being the housing minister who had the longest wait. As he is fond of saying, he shadowed four Labour housing ministers over nearly as many years before finally getting the job himself. So any criticism of inexperience is surely unfounded. He will be tasked with amongst other things replacing the national affordable housing programme, which funds housing associations, and overhauling the planning system.

Finally Liberal Democrat Andrew Stunnell, has been appointed a junior minister, probably with responsibility for housing . This may be a bit of a surprise, although he was Lib Dem housing shadow prior to Sarah Teather. And he is clearly highly regarded enough by his party leader to have formed part of the negotiating team that struck the coalition deal with the Conservatives.

By the way; much as it would have been great for her to be here too, Sarah Teather was appointed an Education Minister.

So will this rather motley crew be willing to do anything about getting empty homes into use. We know what they have said. In opposition Grant Shapps proposed changes to housing association funding to allow them to buy and lease private empty property. He also proposed powers for the public to force public owners of empty properties to get them into use. The Liberal Democrats proposed that empty homes should form a major part of a policy of increasing housing, pledging to get 250,000 empty homes into use.

All very different from the Labour government’s approach, which was to give local authorities powers to force private owners to put their houses in order

What strikes me is that the two coalition parties’ approaches aren’t so very different. They are both about encouraging housing associations to get involved in privately owned empty homes, they are both about incentives rather than coercion, and they both acknowledge that reused empty homes are a cost effective way of creating new housing. The fact that this issue wasn’t in the coalition agreement may in fact be a good sign. It may suggest that it isn’t contentious. If there are differences it is unlikely to be over approach, it’ll be scale. Will there be some minor tweaking to HCA funding, or will the government see this as a significant way of creating more homes?

Perhaps the answer to that lies in the influence of these new ministers. With due respect to Andrew Stunnell, this is likely to be a Conservative rather than Liberal democrat led issue. Although they have made far less play of it Conservative pledges to overhaul the funding system, reduce costs, and create a panning system that encourages rather than forces areas to accept more homes, could create a system that makes it a lot easier to get empty homes into use than build new homes. So perhaps the surprising conclusion is that whilst the housing industry may be moaning If you think that more should be done in getting homes into use there may be a lot to be very optimistic about.

Simon Hughes on empty homes

2010-04-19T10:15:00.006+01:00

"If any issue affects communites and makes people feel uncomfortable and neglected, it is seeing places empty when they know their children have nowhere to live." Simon Hughes the Lib Dem Energy spokesman earlier this morning.

Empty Homes and Manifestos

2010-04-14T17:45:00.002+01:00

In the midst of manifesto week it might be good to look at what the main parties standing in the general election have said so far about empty homes.

Labour: no specific policy commitments

Conservatives: nothing in the manifesto, but policy on empty homes set out in 2009 housing green paper and 2009 empty property policy paper

Liberal Democrats: Costed manifesto commitment to bring 250,000 empty homes into use through grants and loans

Green Party: manifesto to be published tomorrow, but the party have already said that it will commit to halve the number of empty homes.

UKIP: Policy commitment to give greater compulsory purchase powers to local authorities to tackle empty homes

Plaid Cymru: Stated commitment to reducing empty home numbers and to reduce VAT to 5% on home refurbishment

SNP: no specific policy commitments

It’s good, in a curates egg sort of way, but I would of course, like to have seen more. This time next month at least one, and possibly more, of these parties will form the UK government and will be responsible for our county’s housing policy. Whoever that is will be faced with ensuring that the people of this country have somewhere decent to call home. For many years now, we have comforted ourselves that the house building industry will dutifully churn out new homes to match our demand for housing. All government had to do was fix the rules to make sure that the builders built a proportion that people on low incomes could afford.

But as with so many things the last couple of years have proved that systems that rely on perpetual growth don’t work when the economy turns down. What worked last decade probably won’t work in this one, that’s why we need new ideas and new ways to provide homes. Ideas like making the best use of the housing stock we have got, giving people the metaphorical and literal tools to create homes for themselves, creating new tenures of housing enabling people to rent and own homes in more flexible ways. The ideas are out there and have been adopted by many political parties. The next four weeks will see whether we will get a government with the imagination to introduce them.

more vacancy, but 3 ways to resolve it

2010-04-06T13:03:00.007+01:00

Yesterday the Guardian reported that the housing vacancy rate is an enormous 25% higher than previously thought. That means that across the UK there may be 450,000 long-term empty homes. As they correctly point out this is enough to house a quarter of the families on housing waiting lists in this country. Now I know there are people that will say this is an oversimplification and Shelter will go on about needing to build new houses. Well are both are true but that doesn’t take away the significance of these findings.

Just imagine for a moment what would happen if a government introduced measures that really dealt with the problem. What would that do? Well, allowing for the difference between UK and England data , 450,000 homes would house 1.1 million people. As this graph shows, that’s enough to re-house every overcrowded household in England, everybody in temporary accommodation and every single homeless person. No mean feat!

Now, some will say, it’s just a one-off – homeless households just keep forming. Well true enough, but bringing empty homes back into use can carry on too. Once the 450,000 are back into use, there would no doubt be a whole load more homes that had become long –term empty. Getting those back into use would continue to address new housing need. Eventually of course the numbers of empty homes would run right down and as a source of new housing. But that’s a good thing. It would mean that the country was using it’s housing stock at optimum efficiency, which would in itself reduce the numbers of people falling into housing need, and massively reduce expenditure in dealing with the effects of the problem.

So what would a government have to do to really make an impact? We think just three actions would do it:

Offer a financial stimulus to the building industry by redirecting part of the national affordable housing programme towards refurbishment of empty homes. The Liberal Democrats estimate that £3.3bn (out of a £17bn programme) would bring 250,000 homes into use.
Encourage councils and public sector landlords to hand over surplus properties to local communities for them to bring back into use. And encourage them to help owners get their homes into use.
Give home owners incentive to refurbish their own empty homes by reducing VAT rates on refurbishment to 5% - The FMB estimates that this would have a net cost of £102m-£550m

It’s not difficult or unaffordable. Indeed all of the costs would offset other costs elsewhere. And it’s not politically unrealistic either. Between them the three main political parties endorse all of these proposals. We just have to hold them to it and encourage whoever forms the next government to introduce all three.

Forgotten Story

2010-03-31T12:20:00.005+01:00

Last year Liverpool campaigner Elizabeth Pascoe lost her fight to stay in her home, and halt the emptying out and demolition of Edge lane. She was forced out last year. But what has happened since? These two photos of her front door taken before and after she left, perhaps offer an answer.

PROD this!

2010-03-10T17:32:00.003Z

Three years ago, after a visit to the road I described this as the most dispiriting case the Empty Homes Agency had ever dealt with. Four large and imposing Victorian villas overlooking one of Liverpool’s great parks had been left to rot and deteriorate to the point that they were virtually falling down. What made it so dispiriting, was the owner of the property was the very organisation we expect to look to resolve problems like this: The local council. The houses were purchased by compulsory purchase by the council at the beginning of the decade to improve them. But nothing of the sort happened. Residents were moved out and the decline set in. First fly tippers used the gardens as rubbish dumps, looters broke in and stole the architectural features, vandals set about damaging what was left, and then last year somebody set fire to them. Local residents decided not to stand for it, and after numerous unsuccessful requests to the council to deal with the houses, the Friends of Newsham Park used a little used legal power to request action. A PROD (public request ordering disposal) was served on the secretary of state (at the time Ruth Kelly) requesting that the properties were sold. Ruth Kelly agreed, but gave the council a final year-long chance to sort it out. As is the way with housing ministers, by the time the year was up she was no longer the minister. Another round of campaigning by residents finally got Hazel Blears to make a decision, it turned out to be another final chance for the council of another year. By the time this year had expired she had gone too. Another year of hand wringing by civil servants followed after which further campaigning forced a decision from the present minister John Denham. He acknowledged all the problems caused, apologised and then announced that the case was closed.

Politicians of all colours talk of the importance of communities being empowered. Indeed the ministers I mention call themselves Secretary of State for Communities, and the civil servants I mention are in something called the Community empowerment directorate. But when, as in this case, a community took them up on their offer, the response was embarrassment and obscuration. Councils have (in my view correctly) been granted powers to compulsorily purchase land and buildings to improve conditions for the community. But where that fails communities have the right to demand redress. This community was let down first by its council and then by its government. I said it was dispiriting! But ironically there’s something uplifting here too. Despite all the obstacles the community didn’t give up and indeed still hasn’t. I’m a true believer that persistence pays. The desire to get something done is almost always greater than the desire to stop it. In the end if they are right they will prevail. I believe they are and they will.

Replacing Cities with Farms

2010-03-10T11:01:00.004Z

Sir Peter Hall has had a remarkable career. For many years he was a government planning adviser, he led regeneration of the Thames gateway and the building of the channel tunnel, was a member of the urban taskforce and the Barker review of housing supply. But if anything proves pre-eminence it is the ability to be proved right. He has achieved this many times, and it looks like he has done it again over his prediction of the fate of the city of Detroit. Back in 1998 in his book , “Cities in Civilization,” he said that Detroit “has become an astonishing case of industrial dereliction; perhaps, before long, the first major industrial city in history to revert to farmland.”

Detroit has a claim to be the world’s vacancy capital. In its motorcity heyday in the 1950s it was the was the fourth most populous city in the United States. Today it has slipped to eleventh. The decline is not simply that others have overtaken it; Detroit’s population has gone backwards. The impact of this is dramatic. A survey last month showed a vacancy rate of a staggering 35% . Meaning more than 100,000 homes are standing empty.
There has been much soul searching about what can be done, but this week it appears Sir Peter Hall correctly predicted what would happen twelve years ago. Yesterday AP reported that new city Mayor Dave Bing is set to announce that 10,000 houses are to be cleared to make way for farmland.

Of course we know something about this idea in the UK with similar announcements having been made about the future of post industrial cities in the north of England at the end of the last century. The programme that ensued (housing market renewal) originally planned to clear 400,000 houses under rather pessimistic sounding terms like “managing decline” As far as I can recall nobody at the time suggested that the land should be used for farming (an industry that appeared to be in terminal decline itself at the time) But in the decade that has followed the language and the aspiration has subtly changed and now housing market renewal talks about rebuilding housing markets and communities. Some even claim that objective now is for the programme to increase population and housing supply. This is a low point for Detroit, and at such times getting rid of the problem might seem to be the best idea. In the UK it turned out the doomsayers were wrong. With national population increasing our post-industrial cities have begun to recover. The concept of clearance merely as a method of reducing housing supply has been mercifully ditched. Sir Peter Hall may have predicted the response correctly, but hopefully in the end he will be proved wrong.

Tories to Scrap EDMOs

2010-02-12T14:37:00.002Z

Grant Shapps made an entirely reasonable point yesterday that empty privately owned and empty publicly owned buildings are treated unequally. There are indeed powers for councils to bring privately owned homes into use, and the powers that people have to challenge empty publicly owned property are indeed weak. But to suggest, as he did yesterday, that the answer is to level the playing field by abolishing council powers seems to utterly miss the point. The problem isn’t that powers are unequal it is that not enough is done to address wasted publicly owned buildings. In fact the Conservatives have already proposed a much better answer to this problem. Last year in their housing green paper they proposed beefing up “PROD” powers to give the public the right to request the disposal of empty publicly owned buildings – and very welcome it was too. So let’s not have equally rubbish policies for tackling empty homes, Let’s try and have equally effective policies for getting all wasted properties back into use.

Sorry we took your house, do you want it back?

2010-02-09T17:15:00.007Z

Those who followed the extraordinary 40 year saga of the 80 empty homes on the North Circular Road in London may have a sense of de ja vous. This time the story is Armitage Gardens in Luton. The Highways Agency tasked with widening the M1 started buying up properties that seemed to be in the way. Over a period of fifteen years between 1993 and 2008 seventy-three houses were bought and boarded up for future demolition. Then, with motorway costs spiralling out of control, the government decided on a different approach. Instead of widening the road they’d let people drive on the hard shoulder instead. Neat idea! But then what happens to the 73 houses. Why not offer them back to the original owners? Under an old ruling called the Crichel Down Rules that is indeed exactly what has to happen.

But who or what is Crichel Down? Well it turns out that it’s an area of farmland in Dorset. It was requisitioned by the government for bombing practice at the beginning of World War 2 . Winston Churchil gave an undertaking at the time, that all requisitioned land would be given back after the war. It wasn’t, and indeed parts of Salisbury plain including the whole village of Imber remain in government ownership for military use today. Crichel down had another fate, after the war ownership was handed over to the ministry of agriculture who the leased it out at vast profit. The original owners were understandably cheesed off with this arrangement, and began campaigning for the return of their land. After many years they were successful, an enquiry was launched which ultimately ended in the resignation of a cabinet minister and the establishment of rules (the Crichel Down Rules) that are still in use today.

The pity is that the Luton homes were boarded up and not temporarily let. Had they been rented out they would be in habitable condition today and would have provided homes for seventy three households who currently have no home. The Luton case is not a happy one, taking property off people never is. But at least the prospect of a happy ending is possible, and in rather shorter timescale than it took on the North Circular Road.

18 Empty Homes Announcements in a Year

2010-02-08T17:03:00.003Z

Last week saw a significant announcement by the government that will see it invest £1million to develop schemes to bring empty homes into use in 17 areas of the country. It also sets up a national training programme to help councils across the country develop skills in bringing empty homes into use. It took six months of encouragement, lobbying and campaigning by us with help from the Chartered Institute of Housing, the HCA academy and officials at the CLG, and it’s great news.

But, I suspect, unless you’re directly affected, announcements like this probably just come and go. If they do, consider this, this is the eighteenth major announcement on the issue in the last twelve months. Look at them together and I think that cumulatively it’s beginning to add up to something much larger. There is an emerging consensus that the job of ensuring that everybody gets a decent home is not just about building new homes. We can’t afford to build them all, and it’s better for communities if we keep people living in them.

If the last 18 announcements just came and went for you, here they all are:

1. Greater Flexibility on HCA funding to allow housing associations to buy empty homes – Party leader David Cameron launches Conservatives Empty Property Rescue Plan with Empty Homes Agency February 2009

2. More funding to assist housing associations renovate empty homes – New Conservative policy launched in Empty Property Rescue Plan February 2009

3. Allow non-priority need homeless people to self renovate empty homes with the possibility of equity stake reward. – New Conservative policy launched in Empty Property Rescue Plan February 2009

4. Equalise VAT rates on new build homes and costs of renovating empty homes –New Liberal Democrat policy launched in speech by shadow chancellor Vince Cable with Empty Homes Agency February 19 2009

5. Amend commercial property rate relief rules to allow owners of empty commercial property used temporarily as housing to continue to claim rate relief- New Liberal Democrat policy launched in speech by shadow chancellor Vince Cable February 2009

6. Introduce a Repair and Renewal loan scheme for owners of empty properties if they agree to lease them for at least five years to housing associations as social housing. New Liberal Democrat policy launched in speech by shadow chancellor Vince Cable February 2009

7. Allow housing associations and local authorities to use funding from the Homes and Communities Agency to refurbish newly purchased private empty homes; Liberal Democrats- New Liberal Democrat policy launched in speech by shadow chancellor Vince Cable February 2009

8. Make £40m available in HCA grant for short-life (‘property guardian’) housing. Liberal Democrats- New Liberal Democrat policy launched in speech by Vince Cable February 2009

9. Announcement of greater support for local authorities to help get empty homes into use – CLG press release quoting then housing minister Margaret Beckett – March 2009

10. Announcement that funding would be made available from National Affordable Housing Programme would be made available for schemes to bring empty homes into use Speech by Trevor Beattie Director of Policy and Strategy Homes and Communities Agency at Empty Homes Agency Conference – March 2009

11. Equal funding available for housing associations to renovate empty homes as for new build schemes. Policy announcement by Sir Bob Kerslake Chief Executive of Homes and Communities Agency appearing on BBC Breakfast TV with The Empty Homes Agency. – March 2009

12. Requirement for all government bodies and agencies to publish details of empty properties they own. – New Conservative policy launched in Conservatives housing green paper June 2009

13. An extension of the PROD powers allowing the public to request the disposal of empty property owned by councils government departments and quangos New Conservative policy launched in Conservatives housing green paper June 2009

14. Sequential approach for creating homes giving priority for reusing empty homes – new Green party policy in speech by party leader Caroline Lucas July 2009

15. Self Start Housing allowing low income families to self renovate empty homes where regeneration schemes have stalled - New Liberal Democrat policy launched by shadow housing minister Sarah Teather in conference speech September 2009

16. North Circular Road investment scheme announced by Mayor of London Boris Johnson. £57 million pledged for 80 empty homes to be bought and renovated for social housing – September 2009

17. Commitment to invest £1.4billion to bring 250,000 empty homes back into use New Liberal Democrat policy launched by party leader Nick Clegg with Empty Homes Agency January 2010

18. Government Pledges £1million investment in seventeen councils to help bring empty homes back into use. Announcement by housing minister John Healey. February 2010

New £1million empty homes fund

2010-02-05T15:11:00.003Z

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.

House for a pound

2010-02-02T16:10:00.007Z

The story of houses being sold for a pound in Newcastle on Tyne has become almost legendry. I couldn’t count the number of people who have asked me whether you can still buy one. You can’t! Or the number of TV producers who think it would make a great subject for a TV programme. It would! So I’m almost ashamed to say that it wasn’t until last week that I actually went to see them. The picture is Mr Naeem the proud owner of one of the houses. Mr Naeem in fact bought two Tyneside flats for 50p each six years ago and knocked them into one house, as did his five nearest neighbours. The result is remarkable. In 2004 Mr Naeem’s road in North Benwell was struggling. There had been riots, there was a worryingly high vacancy rate, and many other indicators that people had lost confidence in the area.

Selling the ten flats was an inspired idea. Mr Naeem and his neighbours signed up to stay in the area for five years and help get the property into good condition. The ethos of these new residents was the reverse of what was happening to the area. They had a stake and a hope that the area was going to get better. The remarkable result appears to be that when enough people think like this it becomes self-fulfilling. North Benwell today is not an area without problems, but it is a normal functioning residential area in one of the UK’s finest cities. There are no riots, crime has dropped dramatically, and the vacancy rate is no worse than any normal city suburb. Of course many other things have been done to help, not least a city warden service that looks out for people and sorts small problems out quickly. But there are plenty of other similar places where these services don’t work. Selling houses for a pound was a brave move by the property owner – local housing association Home housing But the results have paid off handsomely. What they have bought for their investment is hope and confidence the two most valuable assets in regeneration.

Tower Block of Commons

2010-02-02T13:58:00.002Z

The sight of poor Iain Duncan Smith being asked by a group of girls on an East London estate whether he had ever been “pleasured” was almost too much to watch. But that was the point. Four MPs were set the challenge of living on tough council estates for a week in Tower Block of Commons on channel 4 last night. Inevitably the huge mismatch in cultures gave the MPs plenty of opportunities for social faux pas. Tim Loughton trying in vain to buy copy of the Daily Telegraph, Austin Mitchell seemingly amazed that drug use actually happened on council estates, and Mark Oaten stereotypically predicting that he would be “Eating lots of McDonald's and watching Coronation Street". But to give these guys credit at least they had agreed to take part.

What it also showed was how cheap to build tower blocks, take their toll out of the people who live there. Cathy from Dagenham showed how getting through the security measures needed to get in and out of her estate was like escaping from prison. After years of trying she seemed to have resigned herself to staying in, a clearly intelligent woman sitting bored in front of the telly. The cheap fabric of the buildings was costing people too. Damp walls covered in mould were apparently dismissed by the council as merely condensation. Of course it’s condensation – the building is too poorly insulated and ventilated to stop it. A shocked Mark Oaten resorted to something he felt he could do to help and started a campaign for getting the blocks demolished. Probably a good start, but only helpful if the residents are given the opportunity to live somewhere better.

Ownerless Empty Homes - They Belong to the Queen

2010-01-18T14:09:00.004Z

Of course one of the reasons that properties become empty is that a single owner-occupier dies. A number of people who contact us at the Empty Homes Agency are under the impression that when this happens the property doesn’t belong to anybody and it’s up for grabs. I’m sorry to disappoint again but ..no. The concept of ownerless property Bona Vacantia (Latin for ownerless property) does exist in British law, but more on that later. In fact the truth is weirder than you could imagine.

Firstly most people die having left a valid will. Where this happens an executor is appointed and the property is disposed of in the way the deceased wished. This process is called probate.

Sometimes the will expresses wishes that are ambiguous or cannot happen, and quite often people die without having left a will. Where this happens the property (estate) is said to be intestate. Where this happens administrators are appointed and the property is disposed of according to rules set down in the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. This generally ensures that property is left to the deceased closest relatives.

In some cases people die with no valid will and no close relatives. This is where Bona Vacantia comes in. Under a little known feudal principle called Escheats, if no valid owner can be found the ownership passes to the crown. Of course Buckingham palace doesn’t get directly involved, the process is carried out by the Bona Vacantia division of the Treasury Solicitor. They make an effort to find the rightful heirs of the property and if unsuccessful dispose of it and treat the proceeds as general taxation.

In Cornwall and Lancashire, or to be precise the land covered by the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster the property passes not to the crown but to the Monarch personally through the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. The Monarch has appointed a firm of solicitors Farrer and co to manage the process in a similar way to Treasury solicitors. Both Duchies claim that the proceeds of property is donated to charity and does not personally benefit the Queen or the Prince of Wales.
So for those morbid souls looking to pounce on an ownerless property after the owner had died - hard luck; the Queen Prince Charles and Alistair Darling have beaten you to it.

Liberal Democrats Empty Homes Announcement Today

2010-01-14T14:41:00.005Z

Lots of people have proposed policies that would help get more empty homes into use. But few have proposed something truely game changing. But today the Liberal democrats did just that annoucing a bold policy that would help get 250,000 empty homes back into use. To put that in context that's a third of all the empty homes in England and three quarters of those that have been empty long-term. It would cost a fortune, £1.4billion made up of grants and loans. But they say that the bennefits would be felt by the creation of 100,000 new social homes, 65,000 new jobs and 150,000 private homes returned to use. In other words this isn't just about getting homes back into use it's a stimulus package to get the building industry working on rennovating exisiting homes rather than hoping the market for building new homes picks up. For more info see here

Old Empty Home Falling Down - Let's Do Nothing

2010-01-11T17:06:00.003Z

Heston in West London is not an area known for its heritage. It was the birthplace of Jimmy Page, but he’s still alive. Most people just know it as a service station on the M4. So when local Hestonians found out that they had a 600-year-old house in their town it is not surprising that they wanted it looked after. Sadly that’s exactly the opposite to what has happened. The Hermitage is in a pitiful state. No roof and experts reckon the walls will fall down if remedial work doesn’t start in the next 18 months.

The Hermitage is, to put it mildly, in the latter stages of decline following years of neglect. In cases like this it’s easy to say something should have been done years ago. It’s also easy to say that the council should sort it all out. The truth is when properties get into this state there are usually very few options left, and most of the options are in the hands of the owner. The cost of renovation will be enormous, the management of restoration will be a nightmare, and the potential for a public pillorying if it all goes wrong - huge. The clock is ticking, and if the only option on the table is imperfect it’s probably still better than doing nothing. Which is why it’s a bit odd that when the owner of the Hermitage proposed to renovate and turn it into a care home, local MP Alan Keen said “We certainly don’t want the council to give planning permission to anyone else to do anything nasty to it. I would like to see it kept and that’s what the residents want, and it’s my duty to support them.” Of course Alan Keen has a bit of history on this subject. His own house in Hounslow is apparently still empty following a debacle with Squatters, Comedian Mark Thomas, and the MP's expenses scandal. It's easy to say what shouldn't happen but in the absence of a better idea that's little better to a death sentence to a house with little time left.

Help Yourself to Free Empty Property?

2010-01-07T13:38:00.004Z

Every week or so we get a call from somebody who has spotted an empty property and wants to know how they can claim it for themselves. The BBC TV series “Britain’s Empty Homes” that started this week has prompted viewers to ask us this question on an almost daily basis. The people who ask believe that because a property is unused, it is freely available to anybody who wants it. All you have to do, they think, is get there first, lay claim and hey presto it belongs to you. These callers area usually disappointed when we explain that it doesn’t quite work like that. What everybody else may be surprised to hear is it’s not entirely untrue either.

The legal concept here is a bit of common law called Adverse Possession. It goes back to the days of Henry V111. In essence it says that if somebody squats a property or piece of land for 12 years without being challenged they can apply to become the registered owner. If the original owner can’t disprove the claim they loose title.

In practice it only works like this for property or land that is not registered with Land Registry. The Land Registration Act of 2002 introduced new rules for registered land that better protects the rights of the owner. The squatter can apply to become the registered owner after they have occupied the property for 10 years. Land Registry then contacts the land owner gives them notice of what as happened. They have 65 business days to object. If they don’t the squatter becomes the registered owner, If they do the application fails and the owner is free to evict the squatter. However if after another two years the squatter is still there, they can apply again and they’ll almost certainly successfully become the new registered owner, even if the original owner objects.
More details from the Land Registry here

Christmas, Lego and Building Your Own House

2009-12-21T12:27:00.005Z

My eight-year-old son announced yesterday that he preferred Lego to God. The dilemma that brought about this announcement was the time clash of the local church carol concert and James May’s TV special on building a real house from Lego. Set against this competition God never stood a chance.
In case you didn’t see it, the programme got thousands of volunteers to build a full size house out of Lego bricks allowing James May to live in it for a day and night. It was a TV triumph and if I’m honest more entertaining than the carol concert (which you may have gathered, I missed as well).

Building a house without complicated building skills or the expense of architects, builders, and without digging big holes or messy mortar sounds a great idea. In fact it’s an idea that predates this TV programme by many years. Architect Walter Segal came up with a similar concept in the 1960s. His system of timber frames and wooden panelling was easy and cheap to put together and allowed anybody to become a hosuebuilder.

Ok the houses look a bit quirky but I’m convinced that there’s something very special in this idea. For most of human history people have built their own homes, and in much of the world people still do today. It’s just us, a few western nations like ours, that have subcontracted this role out to house building companies.
Now that it is obvious that the builders can’t keep up with our demands. And frankly their most recent efforts have shown that they are not building what most of us want. Hasn’t the time come to think about building homes again ourselves. Lego may not prove to be the building material of choice, but if it inspires people to think about whether they really could build a house, then perhaps God may forgive us for missing his carol concert this year.

700 homes left empty over pricey carpets

2009-10-22T11:22:00.004+01:00

Vice Admiral Timothy Lawrence, Chief Executive of Defence Estates recently said he thought he’d made a rod for his own back over his target to reduce vacancy levels in MOD homes from their current incredibly high 17% rate.

So how’s it going? According to this extraordinary story…not well. Amazingly 700 MOD homes have been left empty for five months over a delay in fitting carpets.

To his credit the Vice Admiral describes the fiasco as “totally unacceptable”. But in explanation says rather confusingly “Carpets are a difficult area. There is a risk attached”
He continues: “They were suggesting that we should add a lot of risk factor into the sum; we decided that was not good value for money for the public purse, so we took it out.”So if I understand it right, the carpet fitters were a bit pricey so Defence Estates decided to leave 700 homes empty instead of pay them too much. This ended up costing the tax payer £1.4million in lost rent. Either these were the most expensive carpet fitters in history or the Vice Admiral is right – With decision making like this he really has made a rod for his own back.

EDMOs and Tory councils

2009-10-22T10:39:00.002+01:00

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.

Tackle This Decadence Head-on

2009-10-19T11:00:00.001+01:00

Decadence is an unpleasant charge to throw, but I can think of no better word to describe the 21 empty mansions in Mayfair highlighted in Saturday’s Guardian.

Mayfair and its environs have always been a unique property market. It’s location in the heart of London, quality of property, and prestigious neighbours have made it the UK’s premier piece of real estate for years. Its value transcends the normal workings of the property market. Anybody who needs a mortgage can’t afford it anyway. So in troubled times property investors head to Mayfair in much the way commodity investors divert their wealth into gold.

All financial safe havens attract a minority of unsavoury characters, and so it is here. Attracted by the weak pound, money is pouring in from tax havens around the world to buy up property in London’s crock of gold property district. Nothing wrong with that you might say. But the problem is remote absentee owners have little interest in running or managing their property investments as going concerns, they only care about the capital value. Ultimately their self interest begins to degrade the quality of the area. Decline through greed. Decadence if ever I saw it.
And so it is that 21 of London’s most valuable homes have been abandoned and are falling into rack and ruin. Mayfair is not unique, as I reported here recently; parts of Hampstead are suffering a similar fate. It is for exactly these sort of cases that council’s powers to intervene are so needed. Houses in the UK, however posh the address, are for people to live in, not for decadent speculation and abandonment. So power to Paul Palmer and his council colleagues to tackle this head on.

New Empty Homes Figures - Not Good News

2009-10-16T17:08:00.003+01:00

Government quietly slipped some new empty homes statistics this morning. They’re still not published on their website, but can be seen here in Barbara Follet’s answer to a parliamentary question from Caroline Spellman. They show (as we anticipated) the numbers of empty homes continues to rise. The total for England now tops 764,000 the third successive annual increase. These figures show an increase of about 3% which if repeated across the whole of the UK would see the total pass 970,000. Given that these figures are a year behind anyway, I take no pleasure in saying that we really must be approaching a million empty homes across the UK.

The government's secret empty homes

2009-10-13T12:58:00.001+01:00

This week the US federal government admitted to holding on to 50,000 vacant homes. It was rightly reported as a scandal; but what about the UK? How many empty homes is our government sitting on? By my estimate the problem is proportionately worse here, but the real scandal is we don’t actually know. Data on privately owned empty homes is widely available, But official data on the government’s empty housing stock must count as one of the worst compiled and most obscure sets of statistics available. The official figure says they own 4,802 empty homes. See column “AQ” here if you want the source. What’s wrong with it?

Firstly it’s untrue. Just one government agency (Defence Estates) admits to owning double that number, and there are tens of other property-holding agencies and government departments. And that’s before we have even considered one of the biggest sinners – the NHS.
Secondly it’s complied by people who don’t know. This figure is a sum of what each local authority in England thinks there might be in its area. But they have no real way of knowing. Government who should know the answer, just collates an estimate from other people who don’t know.
Thirdly would you have found the figure buried in an obscure spreadsheet called HSSA with a column entitled “other public”? No. It’s hidden where nobody will find it, and not mentioned anywhere else (until now!).

Government Agencies like the NHS and MOD seem to have a particular problem with empty homes. The MOD has a vacancy rate of 17%, ten times the rate of an average housing association. Of course there are special reasons, but the main one is they are an organisation that does something else- defence. They are not good property managers. And of course they are publicly funded, so management failure just gets absorbed as a cost, with no adverse consequences. The MOD are not alone, it’s what happens with most big organisations that have a bit of residential accommodation on the side. Many government agencies have a historic stock of staff living accommodation that is no longer made available to staff, others like the Department of Transport historically owned hundreds of vacant homes that they held as a land bank for future road expansion.

The first step to tackling any problem is owning up to it in the first place. The government has rightly issued guidance about how others should bring empty properties back into to use, but remains highly secretive about the empty homes it owns itself. Yes there are more privately than publicly owned empty homes, but that doesn’t excuse inaction on the publicly owned ones. The first step is for government to audit it’s own housing stock and publish the list of empty homes they own. It might, like in the States, cause people to say it’s a scandal. But it will be less of a scandal than what we have now- secrecy.

Something Miraculous

2009-09-30T17:41:00.002+01:00

In 1970 cars travelling along the A406 in North London would have been Ford Cortinas Hillman Minxs and Morris Minors. Presumably there were too many of them because it was in that year that the Department of Transport decided the road should be widened. In preparation they bought 600 houses on either side through compulsory purchase orders and blight orders… but then nothing. For almost forty years successive government departments and agencies dithered and prevaricated without managing to make any decisions on what, when, how, and even if road widening should take place. Nevertheless the occupants of the 600 houses were moved out and about 200 of the homes were demolished. The other 400 homes descended into an entirely self-created limbo state of vacancy, squatting, arson and dereliction.

This week something miraculous happened. Transport for London, the current owners of the homes, agreed to hand them over to Notting Hill Housing Trust, and the Homes and Communities Agency agreed to pay for their refurbishment. In three years time when the refurbishment is due to be complete, this absurd, painful, and appalling saga should finally be at an end.

Of course this miraculous event didn’t just drop out of the air. Many people have worked incredibly hard to make it happen. Particular credit should go to The Bowes and Telford Community Action group who have proved that communities really can make thing happen.
These houses have been a Bette Noir of the Empty Homes Agency for as long as we have been in existence. It was early last year that we persuaded the then newly selected candidate for London Mayor Boris Johnson to make a manifesto commitment to tackle this long-standing problem. He did, and he and his housing team should also take credit for the best news on this stretch of road for 39 years.

I've Made a Rod For My Own Back - Defence Estates

2009-09-22T11:36:00.004+01:00

Defence Estates remains the country’s biggest empty homes sinner. By it’s own figures it has more than 9,000 empty homes 17% of it’s stock. It has always been an impenetrable organisation to deal with. So I was fascinated it to see an interview with chief executive Vice Admiral Tim Lawrence (a.k.a. Mr Princess Anne) in Public Servant magazine this month (sorry no on-line edition) explaining how he is making the organisation leaner and greener.

Feeling the credit crunch bite Tim?
“My philosophy is to get on and spend the money I have now got and I will cope with the situation in the future if my budget is cut”

So no doubt you’re investing in environmental sustainability?
“If a contractor comes to me and says you can have the standard solution for X but if you want a sustainable solution it will cost 20% more I’ll tend to ask him to go and think again and move on to another contractor”

But you’ll be planning for zero carbon homes in 2016?
“I have difficulty with the concept of zero carbon”

So you’ll off set your carbon instead then?
“I’m not a huge fan of carbon offsetting”

Why the scepticism?
“We have to understand that not everybody accepts the climate science”

So the green agenda is a tough one to argue for in the MOD ?
“I don’t find a lot of opposition to initiatives for more sustainable solutions”

So what about those empty homes? 17% of your stock
“..hugely different to the average local authority housing stock”

But you’re committed to the target to reduce them to 10%?
“I’ve made a rod for my own back …I will be heading towards the target”

Thank you Vice Admiral!
(Questions summarised by me!)

Lib Dems back Homesteading

2009-09-21T16:05:00.003+01:00

Last month I said that it was time to try homesteading again. Sarah Teather it seems agrees. The Lib Dem shadow housing minister in her conference speech today proposed "self start homes" rescuing empty homes in failed regeneration areas by making them available to people to renovate and live in themselves.

A truely edifying spending cut

2009-09-21T16:00:00.003+01:00

Being a property anorak I couldn’t stop myself dragging my family around the Peckham House this weekend. It’s not empty, in fact it was full to bursting with visitors for the London open house weekend. Some of you may remember this remarkable house as one of the stars of the Grand Designs tv series. The extraordinary owners managed to create a house in the most unpromising site imaginable, with planning restrictions that would have lead most to think that there was no chance of being allowed to build anything. But not only did they gain permission, they built a house that is pure joy, for the price of a very ordinary flat.

It is that imaginative thinking and that tenacious determination that we need more of if more homes are going to be created out of empty properties. It is easy to see why it is difficult to return empty homes to use, and easy to see how it would be expensive to try, but with imagination and tenacity almost anything is possible. Today I have ben talking to two great examples of both. Urban Infill’s idea is to fill not just the voids in buildings, but the voids around and above them too. You might think of this as filling the missing teeth in the smile of a streetscape

For sheer tenacity look no further than Phoenix housing cooperative. I’ve written about them before, but their latest project in Bow East London shows how tenacity and hard work can overcome huge financial shortfalls. The four flats that they have asked me to open this Friday had been abandoned buy their owner because they were uneconomic to reuse. But for a sixth of the cost Phoenix have brought them back into use
More imagination and tenacity was called for by the Audit Commission last week. It concluded that councils had become too focussed on building new homes at the expense of reusing old ones. It said that by tackling just 5% of empty homes councils could save a staggering £500billion from their homelessness costs. A rather more edifying public spending cut than some have been suggesting over the last few days

Taking the Market Out of Irish Housing

2009-09-16T07:42:00.002+01:00

We think we’ve got a problem. I’m in Ireland for the national social housing conference and the mood is sombre. The housing market in Ireland overheated to a quite phenomenal degree, and is now in full-scale retreat. The damage it has caused is what I have been asked here to talk about. Estimates vary, but even the most conservative say that 200,000 surplus flats have been built. Added to Ireland’s already sizeable empty homes problem it means there could be anything up to 400,000 homes standing empty. The quite extraordinary plan to be unveiled by the housing minister here in a couple of hours, is for the state to effectively take them over. The government has set up NAMA The National Asset Management Authority. It plans to take on €90 billion of property on 20-year leases and let them to those in housing need. It’s an incredibly bold move. But there are plenty here who also think it’s insane. The opening session of this conference yesterday was entitled "taking the market out of housing" That appears to be exactly what they are planning.

The Housing Poverty Trap

2009-09-14T17:45:00.001+01:00

It was all going so well. I was being shown around a semi derelict house by a housing association and the local council. It had been empty for twenty years and had recently emerged from behind a thicket of undergrowth that the council had just cleared. Not only could I now see the house, but I could see what was going to happen to it, the council had persuaded the owner to lease it to a housing association who would renovate it and deduct their costs off the rent for a couple of years.

For no cost to the owner and not much cost to the public purse, the house would once again become somebody’s home; and not only that, an affordable home for somebody in housing need. I was feeling good. Then the bombshell; it was just a short remark slipped into a question. “Of course we will have to choose somebody who won’t be seeking work.”
“ Won’t?!”
“ If they find work it will all unravel.”
“Unravel?”
“ Housing benefit pays far better than they will be able to afford if they get a job”
And there it was, the housing poverty trap. Promise to stay unemployed and you can have a nice roomy newly renovated house, think about getting a job and you’ll have to stay in crappy cheap temporary council housing.

What is happening to the empty house is wonderful, but system it is done within stinks.

Street Level Regeneration

2009-09-04T16:56:00.002+01:00

The first week of September still has that back-to-school feel, even though it’s more than twenty years since I had any personal experience. It has at least been back to business this week with meetings with the housing minister and both shadow housing ministers. The word that seems to be on the tip of all of their tongues is localism, although strangely none actually dare utter it.

Type Localism into Google news and it will helpfully flash up a timeline chart showing the occurrence of the word over the last 130 years. Remarkably it was common parlance in the 1880s in New Zealand, but fell away for more than a centaury to suddenly spring back into use in the middle of this decade.

Localism, at its simplest, means political control at the lowest local level. This week Grant Shapps articulated how this concept would work for housing under a Conservative government. Those who had thought localism meant giving power back to councils were in for a shock. He meant more local than that. Indeed the phrase he used was “street level regeneration”

No doubt there will be different ideas of what that means. But this week I have visited a remarkable example in East London. Phoenix housing cooperative have taken on four flats that had effectively been abandoned by their housing association owner. Deemed too expensive to renovate they had been left empty for years. Using a team of local volunteers made up of unemployed and homeless young people supervised and trained by an experienced site manager, Phoenix have managed to get the flats back up to standard at a fifth of the price estimated by the housing association. In a couple of weeks they will become homes again to local people otherwise priced out of the housing market. It’s one remarkable little example, but this is street level regeneration, and if this is localism in action I’m all in favour.

Can I have an Empty Home? Yes You Can!

2009-08-10T15:29:00.001+01:00

One of the commonest questions we are asked at the Empty Homes Agency goes something like this “I need a home, but I can’t afford one, can I have an empty one?”

For reasons that are pretty obvious it’s a question we are getting asked more and more often. Our answer I’m pleased to report is the Obama like “Yes you can” In fact even better than that we can sometimes even offer a choice. Our answer goes something like this:

“First of all you can borrow one. The best way to do this is through a shortlife housing cooperative. The cooperative usually takes out a lease on an empty property, puts it into shape and rents it out to its members at low rents. There are lots of cooperatives in London and the south of England such as Westminster Housing Cooperative that operates across London. But shortlife is more sparsely distributed around the midlands and the North of England.

Secondly you can rent an unused property. A similar approach to shortlife has lead to the amazing growth of property guardian schemes. An idea imported for the Netherlands, companies such as Ad Hoc and Camelot have developed it into a flourishing business. Available for employed single people and couples in town and country across the UK and Ireland

Thirdly for a more involved approach there are a number of brilliant self-help housing charities that train homeless people up with building skills and enable them to do up empty properties and create their own homes. The properties are generally surplus social housing. Charities such as Latch and Community Campus 87 lead a growing sector largely based in cities in the North of England.”

Many people are happy with our answer, but many I suspect would like something else. Apparently, even now 90% of us want to be owner-occupiers, and there’s no reason to think that people in housing need don’t have similar aspirations to the rest of the population.

And why not? You should also be able to buy a property cheaply and do it up yourself. In previous recessions “homesteading” has been available to people who would otherwise would be unable to afford homeownership. Councils and Housing Associations disposed of their properties at heavily discounted prices. Newcastle City Council even sold flats for 50p each in the 1990s.

Homesteading schemes helped people with renovating the property sometimes with the help of a grant, sometimes with training. Conditions were normally applied to ensure that only people who intend to become part of the community bought the properties. Speculators were heavily discouraged. This meant that areas with high levels of vacancy and high turnover of residents were stabilised with new long-term occupants who had a strong investment in the community.
Just the ticket for regenerating communities and giving people what they want. It has worked brilliantly in previous recessions, there is no reason why it won’t work in this one. Indeed it could work on privately owned properties acquired especially for the purpose. If you are a council or a property owner who is interested please let me know and let’s make that answer to “can I have an empty home?” even better.

Some good news on reposessions

2009-08-05T11:59:00.001+01:00

In yesterday’s post I mentioned some of the victims of the housing market downturn; tenants in buy-to-let properties. Many have found themselves homeless because their landlord has not kept up with mortgage repayments and had their property repossessed. If the cause were the tenant not paying their rent well fair enough perhaps, but all too often it’s no fault of the tenant at all. Most mortgage agreements contain clauses that require the landlord to seek the lenders permission to grant a tenancy. Many landlords don’t realise it’s there and others just ignore it. After all what lender is going to kick up a fuss? Very few probably so long as mortgage payments are kept up.

But here’s the rub. If the landlord doesn’t keep up with payments and gets repossessed, (and there are plenty of buy-to-let investors who geared themselves up too high and find themselves in difficulty), the tenancy is deemed null and void and the tenants kicked out by the lender.
Good news on this today. The government has announced that it is consulting on new rights for tenants to avoid the worst of this. Within their press release a dreadful story showing why action on this needed “A lone parent with two children who had been renting a property for 10 months. She came back from a holiday to find the locks had been changed and there was a notice announcing that a possession order had been made.”

Unaffordability - the saviour of our housing market

2009-08-04T11:33:00.007+01:00

Last week I reported on the truly staggering empty homes problem in the United States. The popular repost is - it could never happen here. Well possibly, but probably not for the reasons you might think

When the property market started falling last year there was much talk of what the graph would look like. Would it be a quick down and up “V”, a slower “U”, a down up down and up “W”, a down and stay down “L”, or my particular favourite analogy a down, stay down, then up “skip shape”.

A year in, with talk of property prices and stock markets rising, and banks back in the black, it is now apparent that the “U”, “L” and “skip” property markets are not on the cards. We may have a quick “V” downturn after all. To many people three months of house price rises have come as something of a surprise. The flood of repossessions was less extensive than feared, and with fewer properties on the market, those that are available have scarcity value. Phew, that wasn’t so bad was it, lets crack open the bubbly.

Well hold on there is still the possibility that this may be the middle up slope of the “W”. Or indeed a shape we haven’t even thought of yet. As I reported here last week the property market in the United States, which started falling six months before ours, has taken a real battering. And although there is no guarantee that ours won’t follow; one little discussed factor may have saved our housing market from meltdown. Ironically it is one that is usually spoken of as its greatest weakness – unaffordability. This problem has resulted in younger people being priced out of owner occupation. Indeed in 2007 the average age of a first time buyer had reached 34, up seven years since 1977. Now as it so happens, it is that same age group that have been hit hardest by the recession. Increases in unemployment have been greatest amongst the young . The older (mortgage holding) work force has been comparatively spared – so far at least. This means that a relatively small number of redundancies have resulted in property repossessions in the UK. The United States on the other hand, with its lower house prices and sub-prime loans, has high owner occupation rates amongst those hit hardest by redundancy. They have been overwhelmed by foreclosures. Some analysts believe there could be 10 million there by 2012.

There are of course many people here whose lives have been devastated by the recession. Not least tenants in buy-to-let properties that find themselves evicted becasue the landlord couldn't keep up with mortgage payments. A further rise in unemployment could well start affecting larger numbers of owner-occupiers as well. In the meantime at least perhaps we should be grateful that millions of us won’t be losing our homes because we couldn’t afford them in the first place.

Enough empty homes to house a whole country!

2009-07-24T16:40:00.002+01:00

A truly mind boggling statistic. There are enough empty homes in the USA to house the whole UK population! And in case you thought that was shocking, we have enough empty homes in England alone to house the whole population of the Republic of Ireland.

Silly Walks

2009-07-20T17:28:00.000+01:00

It’s usually flattering to be reported abroad. But I’m not so sure about this from Canadian newspaper The National Post “The Empty Homes Agency (stop that thought, you know it's not related to the Department of Silly Walks)“ Apparently the Canadian property market is “hot again” and the concept of people leaving homes empty in London and New York seems to fall somewhere between a curiosity and matter of mild amusement.

It's not squatting, it's much more interesting

2009-07-17T09:38:00.004+01:00

I was chairing the CIEH’s excellent empty homes conference yesterday, when at lunchtime I turned on my mobile to be confronted with “you have 16 new messages” all of them it turned out from journalists. ITV had tracked me down and were waiting outside. What on earth had provoked this?

The answer it turns out is this. Squatters in Bishops Avenue.
For those of you not obsessed with the self-absorbed world of London real estate, Bishops Avenue in Hampstead is said to be Britain’s most exclusive address. Houses have changed hands here for £80million. So news that squatters were here got the property correspondent’s pulses racing.

The story it turns out is much more interesting than that. Calim Ciufudean and his colleagues are not squatters at all. They are licensees or as he puts it caretakers. The crucial difference is they are here with the owner’s consent. Their company Prep ltd offers to look after properties that have been abandoned. The concept proved a bit difficult for some newspapers to understand but the Sun got it, so did London Tonight on ITV. Although some of their viewers came out with the old lines “why don’t they get a job and rent” Apart from the fact that Calim and his colleagues do have jobs, the prejudices just don’t work here. Calim is a resourceful man who is sorting out his own housing and preventing a property falling into wrack and ruin.

There really is something new here. As the local estate agent in Hampstead said: "There's squatting on Bishops Avenue in every recession but it's becoming more organised and gentlemanly. It was more anarchic in the 70s when squatters used to take possession. It's now more organised than squatting, it's more like house sitting”

Self-help-housing

2009-07-10T10:33:00.006+01:00

I've had the privilege of visiting number of self help housing projects over the last few years. And I have to say it’s been one of the best bits of this fantastic job I have. There is something that feels very right about enabling people with no home to create one out of one that somebody else abandoned.

Projects like Canopy and Latch in Leeds, advocates for the homeless in London and youthbuild in Harrogate all train young homeless people to renovate empty buildings. Many volunteers end up living in the properties they have renovated and others find work as a result of the skills they have developed. It’s inspiring stuff! There is a growing movement of new schemes starting up all the time. But now for the first time, there is an excellent resource that shows you how to go about it: Self-help-housing.org Whether you want to start a project, want to improve an existing one or are just interested I’d recommend checking it out.

CPOs be very afraid

2009-07-07T16:08:00.001+01:00

Three years ago the Mail warned us that we should all be afraid because 250,000 “homes of the dead” could be seized by the state under draconian new powers. They were talking about the introduction of empty dwelling management orders (EDMOs). As Mail headlines go I have to admit it is one of their better ones. I remember responding at the time and saying that councils had had compulsory purchase powers for years so why the fuss over EDMOs. The government said at the time that they only expected a few EDMOs to be used. Well I hate to say told you so, but….told you so. Now the Mail is warning us that although very few EDMOS are being used we should be very afraid of compulsory purchase orders. I said to them this time that I doubted more CPOs were being used because in a falling property market there is a greater risk of councils not recovering their purchase costs when selling property on. So if you ask me I wouldn’t be afraid this time either.

Who owns these!

2009-07-06T16:54:00.004+01:00

Never mind about the article for the moment or indeed the handsome boy in the foreground of the picture. Just look what’s behind him! -A whole road of empty houses. This is Windsor Walk in Camberwell in London and these houses belong to the NHS or at least we think they do. After five months of discussion, the South London and Maudsley Hospital Trust have, a few days ahead of an important meeting with them, decided that they don’t own them after all or at least they don’t think they do. It’s becoming all too clear how these properties have been allowed to get into this appaling state, and by the way why the Conservatives chose them as an example of what needs to change - to front thier policy on empty property.

National retailers leaving homes empty

2009-07-06T11:14:00.003+01:00

Inefficiency in the public sector is always an easy target. Indeed I’m not against having a go about it myself especially when it results in property being needlessly left empty. The target today appears to be quangos. Or should I say QU.A.N.G.O.s (Quasi autonomous non government organisations). The Empty Homes Agency isn’t one in case you were wondering; we are an independent charity with no government funding.

But is inefficiency solely a problem of the public sector? If what I have heard this week is true the answer is no. Several local authorities have told me that a few national retailers have appalling records of leaving residential property they own empty. This seems extraordinary, particularly when these companies are operating in areas with high levels of housing demand, and some of them are struggling to make money from their core business at the moment. I’m amazed not to say dismayed, but the evidence for these accusations appears compelling.

William Hill bookmakers have over 2000 branches nationwide. Many have flats above and many of these are within the ownership or control of the bookmakers. How many are empty? I don’t know but one London borough knows of seventeen just within its own boundary. The smaller Coombe Bookmakers operating in the South East of England seems to have a similar problem. A third bookmaker Coral are apparently very touchy about the subject and threatend one council with court for even raising the matter with them. Since I was told about this I started looking out myself and there appears to be a theme here. All the bookies run by these companies do indeed have what look like empty flats above.

Shell owns over 600 petrol stations in the UK; many of them set amongst houses in towns and villages. A worrying number of neighbouring houses to their stations appear empty. From Hampshire, to Suffolk to Cumbria to London the problem appears the same. On investigation it turns out that many belong to the petrol retailer having been acquired in the past presumably with future expansion in mind. What’s going on I don’t know but at least two (in Guildford and Ipswich) have been empty for more than twenty years.
Is this inefficiency, deliberate policy or merely coincidence? I ‘d be grateful for your own views and reports. Please let us know here, here or leave a comment below

A failure to tackle empty homes? perhaps, but no lack of ideas

2009-07-02T12:06:00.006+01:00

Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps strongly criticised what he called the government's failure to tackle empty homes in Inside Housing this week.
(The government) he said “have utterly failed to tackle the glut of empty homes we have sitting empty while families are desperate for a roof over their heads.” Is he right?

With political parties all furiously putting together their election manifestos this might be a good point to look at what each of the main parties have done and what they promise on empty homes.

First the Government. Since it’s been in power it’s actually done quite a lot.
It amended VAT rules so that works on properties empty for two years or more are charged at a reduced VAT rate.
It introduced the housing market renewal programme that was tasked with reducing vacancy in the most depressed housing markets in the England
It has introduced a capital allowance scheme that allows owners of shops to offset tax on the costs of refurbishing empty flats above.
It introduced flexibility for councils to set their own council tax discount on empty homes.
It introduced empty dwelling management orders allowing councils to take over the management of long term empty homes.
But the success has been mixed. Since they have been in power empty home numbers have reduced significantly, but they have crept up again in the last three years. Take up of tax relief schemes is low, 45% of councils still offer full discounts on empty homes and to date there have only been 24 EDMOs.

What is it saying now? Over the last year the government’s comments on empty homes have been very much geared towards making EDMOs work. It has run a seminar for councils and has endorsed the EHA’s guidance on EDMOs. There have been no new policy promises

The Conservatives haven’t of course been in government for eleven years, but locally Conservative administrations in London Birmingham and Kent have devoted attention and resource to councils to tackle the issue. There’s been significant success in Birmingham and Kent, but it is too early to judge what’s happening in London. In their recent housing green paper the Conservatives promissed two measures to tackle empty homes :
The empty property rescue scheme would divert affordable housing resources to reusing empty homes, and would temporarily reduce requirements to encourage take up.
Extending and reinvigorating the PROD (public request ordering disposal) scheme giving power to people to request the sale of long term empty publicly owned buildings and extending it to all government bodies and quangos.

The Liberal Democrats have set out several measures in recent months to tackle empty homes.
Equalise VAT rates on renovation and new-build.
Amend commercial property rate relief rules to allow owners of empty commercial property used temporarily as housing to continue to claim rate relief.
Introduce a Repair and Renewal loan scheme for owners of empty properties if they agree to lease them for at least five years to housing associations as social housing.
Allow housing associations and local authorities to use funding from the Homes and Communities Agency to refurbish newly purchased private empty homes.
Make £40m available in Homes and Communities Agency grant for short-life housing.

So is Grant Shapps right? Well that’s your call. But the significant thing is that all parties have a lot to say on empty homes. In the run up to the last general election none of the parties even bothered mentioning it. The empty homes problem may be getting worse, but at least, now there is a real debate on how to tackle it.

Neighbours Welcome Squatters

2009-06-29T13:51:00.001+01:00

Quote from readers comments in today’s Evening Standard “Well done the squatters for taking advantage of this obvious opportunity to show the gulf between the have and have-nots, for eloquently highlighting the plight of the homeless and the scandal of empty, useable homes. I truly hope this brings about legislation that allows councils to use empty houses, wherever they are, whatever they are worth, for the greater good.”

Squatters in the MP's house

2009-06-29T11:43:00.003+01:00

The news just gets worse for MP couple the Keens. Their empty home has at least been reoccupied but not, I suspect, in the manner they would have wished. A group of squatters has taken residence and they don’t appear to feel restrained about telling the world.

This now leaves the Keens with a dilemma. Do they evict them as they can quite easily by getting a court order, or leave them be, and try and reach an accommodation with them?

Eviction is fairly easy to do. They just need to get an order from the court and if the squatters don’t leave they are committing an offence and can be forcibly removed. In most cases this works and the squatters leave quietly. Given that most squatters are looking for somewhere to live it is unlikely they will return. It would probably be a good idea to beef up the security and if the property is going to lie empty for any length of time this could be expensive.

Reaching accommodation with squatters is a pretty pragmatic choice for property owners too. Licences can be drawn up easily which gives both the squatters (now licences) limited right of occupation and gives the owner control of the property. If the property would otherwise stay empty for any length of time this can be quite sensible. With more to loose, most licensees treat the property well and generally the property is less problematic for the owner than if it were empty.

So in most cases my advice would be. If you need the property back soon evict the squatters, but if you don’t, consider reaching agreement with them.
But then this isn’t a normal case. The squatters have a point to make, and what’s more plenty of people will sympathise with it, even if they don’t approve of the method. Evict them and the Keens’ will provide a great media spectacle as squatters are dragged screaming from the house and then have to board the place up like a military installation to prevent more squatters getting in again.
Reaching agreement with them might be counterintuitive, but it would hardly get the Daily Mail off their backs. Hmmm.. such are the dilemmas for those who leave their properties empty.

Birmingham- a real success story

2009-06-26T15:16:00.001+01:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8119569.stm

EDMO house - good story but who to hate?

2009-06-26T09:48:00.002+01:00

The Daily Telegraph this morning is unsure who to hate most over the Keens’ EDMO threatened house: The government for introducing EDMOs, The council for threatening to use them, or Cameron for not calling for their abolition. The Keens barely get a mention. They must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Fact Follows Fiction - The Unfolding Story of the MPs' Empty House

2009-06-25T13:23:00.001+01:00

Fact often follows fiction, and so it is this week with MPs Mr and Mrs Keen and their empty house.
Back in 2005 soon after Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMO) had been introduced Armando Iannucci thought it would make an entertaining topic for the comedy “The Thick of It”. Hapless minister Hugh Abbot digs himself into a hole over his empty flat and just about survives the onslaught of Alistair Campbell clone Malcolm Tucker. This week husband and wife MPs Ann and Alan Keen find themselves in similar difficulty.

It appears the Keens moved to their central London second home in order to renovate their Brentford constituency home. Something clearly went wrong because these photos from the Evening Standard would seem to suggest building works are to put it mildly - stalled.

Hounslow council quite rightly contacted them and asked what they are going to do about their now overgrown and distinctly empty house. They set out the possible consequences of doing nothing including, you’ve guessed it, an EDMO. It’s all over the papers today and having just done two TV interviews, it doesn’t look like the story is going away. I’m sure what Hounslow sent is an early warning letter to the Keens, and I very much doubt the council is on the brink of sending their papers off to the Residential Property Tribunal. But on the facts I have seen there’s nothing to stop them doing so. Mrs Keen says that they are exempt because "owners undertaking renovation work on their homes are not under threat of repossession". Sorry Mrs K but no such exemption exists, but if they get on and get the property reoccupied I’m sure they will have nothing to worry about – well from the council anyway. But in these less than forgiving times for MPs, that, it appears is only the beginning of their worries now.

Oh Goody! Another Government National Register

2009-06-23T14:22:00.001+01:00

I’ve just been listening to the government’s response to the Rugg review on the Private Rented Sector. It didn’t leave me enthused. The key proposal is to introduce a national register of every private rented property and landlord in the country funded by a fee to the landlord of around £85. This will sit on top of existing HMO licensing, selective licensing, additional licensing and the myriad of discretionary accreditation schemes.

What the government has done is fall into the research trap. Julie Rugg is fine woman and a highly respected academic. But if you ever give a researcher a job to do, you can be certain that the top recommendation they will come back with is – let’s do more research. On this point Julie Rugg didn’t disappoint. It was the top recommendation of her review. No doubt similar studies got the government thinking that a national ID database was a good idea too.

Rubbish Response to Empty Promise Petition

2009-06-12T17:41:00.002+01:00

When think tank Policy Exchange published its Cities Unlimited report last year, advocating abandoning regeneration in much of the north, there was uproar. Even David Cameron who had previously been a committed Policy Exchange fan was forced to call it “barmy” “Insane and complete rubbish” John Prescott described it as “the most insulting and ignorant policy I've ever heard”.

So if that idea was so awful, what exactly is the difference with this? Today 10 Downing Street published it’s response to the Inside Housing Empty Promise campaign petition

In response to the general point that the Prime Minister should help reduce the number of empty homes, the government say they agree, but then back-pedal a bit by saying
“Areas with high concentrations of empty homes often do not correspond with areas of high housing need.”

On the need for targeting investment at the problem, the government say they are doing it already but then say:
“this type of approach is not always appropriate as a way of dealing with long-term empty properties in need of repair. Very often it is more expensive to refurbish homes to the standard we expect than to build them from scratch. Homes also have to be of the right type and size and in the right place. The empty homes figures assume that the empty homes are where the need lies, which is not necessarily the case.”

So what should we make of this as a statement of government policy? A summary might be empty homes are only worth reusing if they’re cheaper to refurbish than building new homes, and only worth doing if they’re somewhere with established housing demand.
Not much ambition to regenerate our inner cities in that , not much ambition to help resolve the blight of empty homes in people’s neighbourhoods either, and no apparent regard for the environmental consequences. If Cities Unlimited was rubbish, so I’m afraid, is this.

Something is very wrong

2009-06-11T11:46:00.006+01:00

I apologise, the quality of these photographs is awful, but then so is the subject matter. This is the Ocean Estate in Stepney East London. In 2001 Tony Blair visited here to launch a £56million regeneration scheme that promised to transform one of Britain’s worst estates. Built between 1949 and 1975 it is made up of about 40 blocks and some 1700 flats all of which were due to come down to be replaced by a bright new mixed tenure community. But it wasn’t long before things started go wrong. By 2004 costs had spiralled, and several of the organisations involved were facing accusations of fraud.

Eight years on, what has happened? I visited recently. What I saw shocked me. No bright new community, no new buildings, and no demolition. Eight blocks, emptied out at the beginning of the decade remain empty. Amongst them were a handful of squatters and a few forgotten leaseholders who had the terrible misfortune to buy their flats before Tower Hamlets announced the regeneration plans. A vanload of heavies with pit bulls in the car park turned out to be council contractors securing (unsuccessfully it turns out) the estate against squatting.

I was invited in to see the work of some other council contractors. A newly vacated flat had just had the anti-squatting treatment. This it turns out involves taking a sledgehammer to all the windows and doors, smashing all light and electric sockets, pouring concrete down the toilet, then smashing that and the basin too. Finally the walls are sprayed with non drying paint. It doesn’t work, squatters have time and ingenuity on their hands and they move in anyway and repair the damage. Allegedly sometimes assisted by council contractors who have lost faith in the futility of their task.

If this were an isolated example it would be bad enough, but this is what I am seeing across the country. The Ferrier Estate in Greenwich, Woodberry down in Hackney, Wood End in Coventry to say nothing of the many stalled regeneration plans involving privately owned homes in the nine pathfinder regions in the north of England. Houses being smashed up to prevent them being used whilst waiting for regeneration schemes that are looking increasingly unlikely to come off. Something is very wrong. These grainy images were all my cameraphone could pick up, but they do perhaps pick up the darkness of what is going on here.

What's all the fuss about ReportEmptyHomes.com?

2009-06-09T18:05:00.007+01:00

Of all the reasons to be fed up with the BNP’s electoral success, this was admittedly not the worst. But none the less I was pretty cheesed off to be last-minute bumped off the agenda of the Jeremy Vine show on Monday for a discussion about the merits or otherwise of messers Griffin and Brons.

Controversial
What I was going to talk about was nonetheless controversial. Or at least the Daily Telegraph thought so, ReportEmptyHomes.com as many of you will know is a website we launched six months ago. Numbers of empty homes are increasing significantly at the moment. We estimate that sometime this year the numbers in the UK will rise above a million. With record number of people in housing need (1.8 million families on housing waiting lists) and house-building at an eighty year low. We believe it has never been more important to ensure empty homes are returned to use. The purpose of the website is to help do this. It helps people affected by abandoned and empty homes get a remedy by getting the problem straight to the people who can deal with it - council empty property officers. Since its November launch there have been about a 1000 reports, reporting about 2000 empty homes. 27 have already been returned to use. We think this is a great result in such a short time and bodes well for the website's continued success. I want to thank the councils who have responded to it so well.

Do Burglars really use ReportEmptyHomes.com?
There are nonetheless voices that don’t agree. Saturday’s Telegraph condemned the website as a burglar’s charter . It sounds a reasonable point to make and one we take very seriously, but not one that I think stands up to scrutiny.
Do burglars really look through websites and plan their attacks? The police say not. The Home Secretary even said so a few weeks ago “Most burglars are opportunistic” she said in February.
Do burglars target empty homes? Logic says they target properties full of possessions when nobody is at home. Empty homes tend to be just that, empty, offering poor pickings for burglars.
Do empty homes attract petty crime? Yes of course they do. Fly tipping vandalism, even arson are all common consequences of homes being empty. But the way to deal with all of this is to get the properties back into use. Exactly what ReportEmptyHomes.com aims to help happen.
Do Burglars really use ReportEmptyHomes.com? there is absolutely no evidence that they do.

Change it
Several people have suggested changes to the website, we are grateful to them for thier ideas, and we are taking them into account to see how we can improve. But some suggestions are frankly pretty daft. Privacy International advised councils to withdraw cooperation. Withdraw cooperation from whom? The requests for action they would then be ignoring are from their constituents requesting help.

One council said to us that they would not deal with referrals through the site until we changed them so they fit the criteria of their standard council complaint form.

Anonymise the whole thing say others. But what would this do? Make it a pretty boring website for one. Councils in Hampshire have taken this aprroach, but how does it help the user? Tim Morely compares the two approaches here
No, making small improvements in apparent security have big impacts on usability. This website is working well. Let’s not loose that.

Buckingham Palace
The Website has a clear abuse reporting facility. Anybody, including owners can report unsuitable content. This is sent to a moderator. Until Saturday we had had only one notification of misuse. In fact this turned out to be a typo in the address line inadvertently suggesting a different property was empty. The content was suspended immediately and was later reinstated when it had been corrected. All reports of misuse are reported to a moderator. Moderators also review the site content regularly. They had plenty to do over the weekend when a number of Telegraph reading wags tried to enter nonsense reports of properties like 10 Downing Street and a series of medieval castles. One should have read my blog, Buckingham palace was actually a good call. . It didn’t work. They were all removed immediately.

It seems we have two choices. We either work together with this website and other means to respond to people’s valid concerns about empty homes, or we just keep quiet about it for fear we might upset somebody. I’m afraid I’m not in a mood for keeping quiet.

What’s Happened to Iain Wright?

2009-06-09T10:19:00.000+01:00

No not the ex footballer. Iain Wright the junior housing minister, undoubtedly one of the good guys in the DCLG, has been conspicuous by his absence in recent days. I for one was surprised to see John Healy apparently leapfrog him to replace Margaret Beckett as the new housing minister. But in all the lists of new ministers Iain Wright’s name was absent. I am getting the distinct impression that no news is bad news for him. Speculation is rife that he has left the government.

Not another housing minister

2009-06-05T21:09:00.001+01:00

With the greatest respect to John Healy – Oh no not another housing minister! That’s 4 in 18 months. The news arrives the very week that I receive a positive letter from his predecessor Margaret Beckett. Let’s hope she’s left him a good handover note.

The Queen's Wasted Houses

2009-06-02T10:39:00.005+01:00

Perhaps relieved to find that somebody else is squandering even more public money than them, the Commons Public Accounts Committee yesterday uncovered a story of quite staggering waste by the royal household. In reviewing the accounts of the Occupied Royal Palaces Estate, which includes Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. MPs found 32 empty flats including an apartment last used by the Prince and Princess of Wales.

A witness for the royal household admitted:
“At the time of the PAC Hearing, there were 32 vacant self-contained residential properties, compared with 27 at the time of the NAO Audit at the end of July 2008. Of these 32 properties, 28 are within the secure cordon (25 at the end of July 2008).
Three of the properties outside the secure cordon are being refurbished for commercial letting while the other is being returned to the Crown Estate.
Four of these properties have been mothballed because the costs of refurbishment are too high. 17 of the 28 vacant properties within the secure cordon were yet to be allocated at the time of the hearing.
10 of these were also unallocated at the end of July 2008, but three of these have now been allocated to staff. Six properties (three inside, three outside the secure cordon) have been vacated by pensioners since the end of July 2008, all of which were previously occupied rent-free.”

Eight years ago the committe, reviewing the same issue, reccomended that the royal household move staff into the vacant flats inside the secure area and let-out the flats outside. this sensible advice appears to have been roundly ignored whilst the problem of vacant flats has got worse.

MP in Empty Homes Scandal

2009-05-12T17:13:00.002+01:00

I passed up the opportunity earlier today to comment to a journalist on a member of parliament who had used her expenses to pay for a house that was then left empty. I didn’t do so out of any sense of condoning leaving properties empty or condoning MPs misusing their allowances. But I don’t about you but I’m beginning to get bored by the whole story. Yes the Telegraph have done an admirable job in exposing a scandal. If it results in a new parliamentary expenses system with greater public scrutiny, what they have done will be seen in the best tradition of public service journalism. On the other hand if the result is just a further drop in the esteem in which politicians are held, it won’t have done much good.

Over the last few years I have had the privilege to meet many remarkable MPs. And whether I agreed with them or not, I got the sense from all of them that they there to try and do some good. Some achieve their aim, some don’t. But what I don’t recognise is the “They’re all just in it for the money” accusation that lots of people have thrown around this week. What has been exposed is bad, deceitful even. But it doesn’t mean MP’s are all corrupt. My expereince of working in many differnt organisations is taht most self-policed non-scrutinised systems attract bad smells over time. How many company car mileage schemes would stand up to Telegraph style scrutiny? I’m just looking forward to getting back to talking to MPs about what they are doing about the 1 million empty homes in this country not just the odd one or two they may own themselves.

Late April Fool

2009-04-28T18:06:00.001+01:00

In the 1980s the Australian comedian Rod Quantock made a joke about fried mars bars on his TV show. The idea was he cooked things that sounded hideous and then actually ate them. Everybody agreed fried mars bars were just too gross to really eat and found it hilarious. Then something bizarre happened; fish and chip shops in Scotland actually started selling them. They caught on and now even Nigella cooks them.

Now something similar seems to be happening with property guardians in the USA. This radio station decided to do a spoof on April 1st. Actors living in empty houses try and make them look occupied for prospective purchases. Admittedly it was hardly the most sidesplitting April fools joke I’d ever heard. But it seemed to fool the listeners. Then amazingly today comes this. The radio station discovers that actually their joke is quite a neat little business idea and people are really doing it. We’ll we’ve got news for you, there’s an even better idea here. Instead of living in empty homes in order to sell them how about just living in them. Property guardians are a major growth industry here. First Camelot Ad Hoc and Ambika imported their business model from the Netherlands and now hardly a week goes by without another UK based company picking up the idea. It’s really no joke and much better for you than fried mars bars.

Wisdom in the Sun

2009-03-23T19:31:00.001Z

You can’t always say this about a story, but the most enlightened comments on this can be found in the readers letters pages of the Sun. The story is this one, published in virtually every paper this morning. A squatter requested a list of empty homes from Lambeth Council. The council correctly decided that it was obliged to comply with the request and duly (but reluctantly) responded with a list of 800 empty homes in its borough. The council itself, it appears, own most of the properties on the list. The press has been quick to condemn the council for releasing the information, but no one apart from the Sun’s readers have mentioned the real problem. Why on earth have Lambeth got 800 empty homes? When you hear, as I have, that some of them have been empty since the 1970s, and when you know, as I do, that Lambeth kicked out lots of short-life tenants last year because it wanted vacant possession of its properties, it’s hard to disagree with what these Sun readers say:

“Why have they got empty homes when people are homeless,?”
“Haha good teach the council a lesson”
“They should be fixed up and have tenants move in”“How many families are homeless who can’t have one?”

Useless government repsonse to useless report

2009-03-19T16:57:00.000Z

Last month I reported the useless government report on council tax discounts on empty homes. This was the one where after 18 months and allegedly £250,000 of expenditure the report concluded it still didn’t have enough information to make a recommendation on removal of council tax discounts on empty homes.

I said then that I could hardly wait for the government response. Well it came today. Not that you would know unless you were really looking out for it. Asked by Stewart Jackson what the government was going to do about it, John Heally replied “The Government have no plans to review its policy on local authorities' discretionary power to reduce the council tax discount on empty properties”

Well that, they no doubt hope, has kicked the issue into the long grass for another parliament. I’m afraid I don’t feel that compliant. I can assure you that the Empty Homes Agency will continue campaigning on this important issue. And if anybody from government is reading, we are happy to do you some more research, It will be much cheaper and I can promise you much more conclusive.

Preventative Sense

2009-03-18T14:38:00.001Z

Seeing the LGAs welcome list of banned bad council words and phrases this morning I thought I would see how many I had come across. Frighteningly out of the one hundred I recognised ninety nine. The one I hadn’t seen before was one of the worst “Preventative Services” What on earth are they? Rude council receptionists?
The answer it turns out is even worse. The term is applied to council services to help young people avoid getting involved in crime. Much needed services no doubt. But the word they are looking for is surely “preventive.” Not content to use long words it seems councils are throwing in an extra syllable for the hell of it. The LGA is right to be cracking down on this.

Margaret Beckett on Empty Homes

2009-03-11T15:46:00.000Z

VAT on Refurbishment- Fantastic News

2009-03-11T11:02:00.001Z

Why is VAT levied on the maintenance and repair costs of homes, when building new buildings is zero-rated? There can be few more illogical taxes and few that so blatantly promote environmentally damaging behaviour over green behaviour. Hardly anybody even tries to defend it anymore. The government’s traditional response is they’d like to change it but they can’t because of European rules. Well yesterday that excuse disappeared.

ECOFIN TheEuropean Economic and Financial Affairs Council agreed to allow member states to reduce VAT on housing repair and maintenance. The ruling is a triumph for the Cut the VAT campaign lead by the Federation of Master Builders. The Empty Homes Agency is a supporter and active member of the campaign. Reduced VAT would make it more cost effective to bring thousands of empty homes back into use.

With their best excuse gone will the governemnt try and find another one or will they grasp the oppurtunity to reduce VAT? In my view it is the single most importatn thing they could do to tackle our empty homes crisis

Margaret Beckett and Empty Homes

2009-03-11T10:34:00.000Z

Yesterday’s announcement by Margaret Beckett in which she called for more council action on empty homes was welcome, and not overdue. It’s the first time a government minister has had anything significant to say about councils and empty homes since the government introduced empty dwelling management orders in 2006. The fact that since then councils have used the legislation only seventeen times is hardly praiseworthy and frankly looks pretty feeble. Yes councils can get homes back into use without using the legislation and yes some owners have brought their properties back into use without the council needing to complete the EDMO. But nevertheless, does seventeen EDMOs in two and half years indicate councils are doing all they can? Not to me it doesn’t.

But here’s the rub. Councils have become conditioned to doing what they are told by ministers, and two and a half years of silence has not given the impression ministers think it that important. When EDMOs were introduced government introduced no new funding. Although councils can in theory recover their costs when carrying out an EDMO, there is a big upfront bill (of perhaps £70,000), which can only be fully recovered after seven years. Small councils simply can’t afford this. Government doesn’t have to hand out money to help. Making a fund available that councils can borrow against would make all the difference.
So well done to Margaret Beckett for calling for action and promising to write to all councils, but will you back it up with support and funding to make sure that councils don’t forget it again in a few months time?

Conservative Empty Homes Crusade

2009-02-15T17:52:00.003Z

There are plenty of times over the last few years when I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but yesterday’s Financial Times reported the Conservative leader crusading against empty homes. It had strange echoes of the Conservative backed Crusdae against EDMOS two years ago. But with the Conservative empty property rescue plan launched on Friday, I think the party has genuine reason to claim its ideas are now ahead of the government on empty homes.

The issue at stake is the rulebook on grants for housing associations to buy property. The truth is they are looking distinctly out of date, geared as they are towards housing associations acquiring newly built property from developers. Over the last few years most housing associations have acquired housing as part of the planning gain agreements developers have to reach with councils. Developers have had to make 20 –50% of their houses available for affordable housing. Housing associations have been able to claim grants to help them buy. This means most housing associations have only been taking on brand new houses and flats; so nobody really noticed when the Housing Corporation withdrew purchase and repair grants about five years ago. It meant it was that was no longer possible for housing associations to claim grant for repair costs. Buying up and doing up old run down homes was now much more expensive than buying new homes.

Suddenly over the last few months, since the recession hit, new housing developments are being wound up or wound down and that nice source of new affordable housing has gone. Housing associations now have to look elsewhere for new homes. With empty homes increasing it seems obvious to me that this is where they should be looking. I have been calling on the government and the Homes and Communities Agency (HACA) to change the rules to allow housing associations to claim grant for buying and renovating run-down empty homes, so far to no effect. So that is why I welcome the new Conservative policy. They get it, and have proposed a relaxation of grant rules that would address this exact point. Of course this doesn’t add up to a complete policy, but it’s a good start and there are the germs of other good ideas here too.

I was fortunate enough to meet David Cameron on Friday and made this very point to him. I said we needed action on reforming VAT to make refurbishment of empty homes more cost effective and we need more assistance to encourage the proliferation of short life housing schemes. His answer was this announcement was just stage one of the Conservative policy there would be more in stage two. I intend to hold him too it.

Ask a stupid question

2009-02-06T18:17:00.002Z

This morning Shelagh Fogarty on radio Five Live spoke to the Ramblers Association about how the recent snow has got people out walking. They asked for the Ramblers recommendation for going out in the cold. Sensing it was a dumb question she made a light hearted comment about listeners complaining about being told the bleeding obvious. Her suspicions were proved correct moments later when the Ramblers recommended wearing gloves.

I had similar feelings this afternoon when I read the government’s new research the Application of Discretionary Council Tax Powers for Empty Homes This is the product of a concession the government made to us in the 2007 pre budget report after we had asked why half the councils in the country were still paying council tax discounts to owners of empty homes despite being given the power to remove them. Was it worth the wait? Well here is the sole recommendation:

“Because of limitations to the data and the small scale of the study, a more substantial research study would be required to estimate the precise effects of the decision to retain, reduce or remove the LTE (LTE stands for long term empty home by the way) discount on owner behaviour and how these effects could vary according to circumstances.”

Well in our present empty homes crisis - that’ll help won’t it! Apart from that there is some nicely presented maps and data and lots of explanations as to why properties might be empty and what councils can do about it. Thank you very much. I can hardly wait for the government’s response, next time I think I’ll ask the Ramblers instead.

Empty Promise

2009-02-04T16:31:00.002Z

My thanks to Inside Housing Magazine who this week launch their Empty Promise campaign. I urge you all to sign the petition they started today. Give your views at emptypromise@insidehousing.co.uk and report those empty homes at ReportEmptyHomes.com

Empty MOD Homes - Still a Scandal

2009-01-30T17:26:00.006Z

In the early 1990s empty homes owned by the military became a national scandal. Thousands of homes for service people were left empty causing public outrage at a time of record homelessness. To be fair to the military changing defence needs caused by the end of the cold war had caused many properties to become surplus. But the MOD proved ineffective in dealing with them. In one of the Empty Homes Agency’s first campaigns we said that surplus military homes should be used to house those in housing need. The government responded, and in 1996 they took a dramatic step that was supposed to end the problem once for all. They sold nearly 60,000 homes (the majority of the military’s housing stock) to a private company Annington Homes. In one fell swoop Annington homes became, and remains today the largest private landowner in the country. The government’s idea was that Annington would manage refurbish and gradually dispose of the homes onto the private market. With market forces introduced into the stock of housing, the thinking was vacancy rates would drop and the military’s housing stock would better match their housing needs.

Unfortunately the story did not end there. Figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats today reveal that the military’s housing vacancy rate is as bad as ever. With an estimated 9000 empty homes the military’s vacancy rate is approximately 20%. Seven times the national average and around ten times the rate of an average housing association. The customary response from the MOD to accusations of high vacancy levels is that they are a special case. And indeed they are. The military needs a flexible housing stock to accommodate changing operational needs. Most people would agree that service people returning from a tour of duty abroad need a decent home to return to, and that means keeping a greater vacancy rate than other housing providers.

But what is so significant about these figures is that they don't reppresent pristine properties waiting to welcome new residents. A BBC’s investigation for the Today programme last year knocked the MOD’s argument right off its pedestal. Visiting a selection of empty military homes the BBC discovered that most were in no fit state to house anybody. Left totally unmanaged and, amazingly – unsecured, the homes fell into semi-dereliction. The Military's argument that they are mothballed awaiting a returning battalion from Iraq is rendered absurd and faintly insulting to service men and women. The one empty MOD property I saw last year that was in good condition (with windows open and heating on- presumably to stop condensation rather than heat the atmosphere and attract intruders) ended up a squat .

So what went wrong, and how come the Military still own so much residential property? It turns out that many of these homes are the very same ones that were sold to Annington homes in 1996. Discovering later that they didn’t have enough housing, the MOD leased back many of the homes it sold. Now, saddled with high rents and dilapidation clauses, leaving them empty now is even more wasteful to the MOD than it was in the early 1990s. Can anything be done? I think it can. There are housing providers that are perfectly suited to these circumstances. Shortlife housing providers are very good at making use of the most unpromising buildings. They can help with repairs and renovation and provide what these homes need most – occupants. If military needs change and the MOD need them back, shortlife housing agreements allow for them to be rapidly returned to the owner. The MOD gets residents and a management service to stop the properties from deteriorating, Neighbours loose an eyesore and source of anti social behaviour. Lots of people get homes to live in. We put this to Defence Estates last year and on the Today programme last February and they said that they would do it. So what’s happened in the last year? Nothing. They haven’t put any properties out to shortlife and their vacancy rate has gone up. Shame on them.

Posh Squats

2009-01-23T17:54:00.003Z

I have been resisting the temptation to post anything about so-called posh squats up until now. They appear to be getting plenty of publicity without my help. Today, however, I have spoken to six journalists about them, including, if she will forgive me for bracketing her in such company, Vanessa Feltz. There is no doubt that this has become a big story.

It started in Brighton, then Upper Grovesnor Street, then Green Park and now Park Lane. Some of the poshest addresses in the UK have become squatted by what appears to be a new breed of lifestyle squatters. In total their number is tiny but the fact that they have infiltrated such prestigious neighbourhoods gives them access to the media in a quite phenomenal way. What amazes me is the uncritical way they have been reported. Both the Telegraph and the Mail managed to print articles on squatting without uttering the words scrounger, freeloader or sponger - unthinkable just a few weeks ago. The recession moves in mysterious ways!

Turning the Place Over

2009-01-16T08:42:00.002Z

There was one place where culture and empty properties did meet in Liverpool. Artist Richard Wilson created what many called the most daring piece of public art in Britain – Turning the Place Over. It was installed in an empty building in a side street in Liverpool’s city centre. I remember stumbling upon it by accident last year without ever having heard about it before. For sheer surprise value I think it was the best way to see it. Sadly the motor has now been turned off, but it lives on in You Tube.

The Liverpool Legacy

2009-01-14T17:20:00.005Z

Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture ended last week, and there has been much discussion as to what sort of legacy it will leave. It has certainly made a change to have a positive spotlight on what for me is one of this country’s greatest cities.

With the enormous new “Liverpool One” shopping centre taking shape, a revitalised Pier Head and a new cruise liner dock their can be little doubt that the city centre is looking forward with confidence.

A mile or two away however and regeneration of Liverpool’s housing stock looks less rosy. Anfield contains a greater volume of empty homes than anywhere else in the UK. Liverpool’s housing regeneration was based on trying to attract the housing boom into areas of the city with depressed housing markets. Large volumes of homes were bought up and left vacant in the hope that they would appeal as large development sites to big housing developers. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked, and with the housing boom over there is nothing to attract.

Like many other towns and cities Liverpool has it’s fair share of vacant new flats too, but nowhere has the combination of overoptimistic housing developers, and regenerators left so much damage. The legacy of culture for this city is surely bright, but the housing legacy is in need of urgent attention. This superbly edited video speaks a thousand words.

Empty home owners prolonging the recession

2009-01-05T13:47:00.003Z

I spent part of Christmas in my hometown of Ipswich. Being on holiday I was not on empty homes alert, but I could hardly miss this. When these waterfront homes were first planned a decade ago they were supposed to help turn the town from a working port into an executive service based economic hub. It hasn’t worked. The port has disappeared downstream, but the executives never really materialised. Like almost everywhere else in the UK the population of Ipswich is filled with ordinary people who need homes at ordinary prices. Instead what they’ve got is homes built for a hypothetical population at hypothetical prices. The reason they stay empty is because the owners have not yet accepted that the prices need to drop drastically. Only when they do, and only when people start buying them will we be able to say that housing market has bottomed out.

In the meantime the one thing that could knock some sense into this ludicrous situation is the council using its enforcement powers to force the owners to get then occupied. Councillor Harsant’s comments don’t lead me to think this is imminent. But there’s nothing to stop the council doing this and forcing the owners to accept the true market rental value. It may sound draconian, but to do otherwise is simply storing up a bigger financial hit for the owner later, and putting the prospect of housing market recovery ever further away.