25 February 2010
The Empty Homes Agency is calling on the government to prioritise reusing empty homes as a source of new housing supply.
The Empty Homes Agency believes that a considerable portion of the government's house building target for England could be met from bringing long-term empty homes back into use. If just half of them were returned to use it would provide 162,000 new homes (nearly a year's worth of the government's housing growth target) and obviate the need for building on 4,500 hectares of land. However, while the government has numerous targets and performance indicators for building new houses there is no national target for returning empty homes to use, and the government has abolished its only empty homes performance indicator. We are calling on the government to treat empty homes returned to use as an equal source of new housing as new build housing. By:
-Allowing housing associations to claim grants from the Homes and Communities Agency for purchase and repair of run down empty homes.
- Including empty homes returned to use within national and regional housing growth targets
- Including empty homes returned to use within government performance indicators for housing growth
- Including empty homes returned to use within the Housing and Planning Reward Grant System.
- Making it a statutory duty for local authorities to tackle empty homes in their area.
- Properly funding local authorities to tackle empty homes. Particularly creating a fund to allow local authorities to carry out EDMOs
For more information on the Empty Homes Agency click here