Not another housing minister

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VAT on Refurbishment- Fantastic News

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

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?