National Association of Empty Property Practitioners

Here's our latest newsletter.  Enjoy!

We've lost some recent content as a result of moving servers.  It will take a while to get back. Any problems, let us know.

These documents are discussion drafts of a monitoring framework to replace Best Value Performance Indicator 64.

Attached below are the guideline, in summary and detailed form,  and a template spreadsheet for reporting on the summary statistics.   We will be lobbying for the relevant information to be included in the annual HSSA return to give due recognition to local authority empty homes work.

Please submit comments by the Executive Meeting due to be held on the 10th June in London either by emailing admin@naepp.org.uk

Here is the latest and final official draft of our proposals for a National Empty Homes Initiative.  There's still time to propose further amendments but you will need to be quick.  Please send any suggestions or feedback to admin@naepp.org.uk

Dear colleagues

Please find attached the link to the latest Newsletter from NAEPP. This is concerned exclusively with the current proposals being put forward by CLG to improve and simplify the colletion of housing statistical information.

If you want empty homes work to remain visible we strongly recommend you ensure some input into your local authority's response to the consultation process.  In particular, support for the NAEPP proposal that local authorities should be required to report in their Housing Strategy Statistical Returns on their empty homes activities, which is not currently a part of CLG's set of proposals, would seem advisable.

Apologies (yet again!) for those who will get both the Newsletter and an email notification of the Newsletter.

Best wishes

David Gibbens

Dear colleague

Please see below the link to our latest newsletter.

In the next couple of days we'll be following this up with an email requesting your views on CLG proposals around the collection of empty homes statistics.

Apologies in advance to those who will get both the newsletter and  an email notifying them of the newsletter!  That should be sorted very shortly.

Best wishes

David Gibbens

Plans to bring 234 empty private sector homes back into use over the next three years are about to go before the Council's Cabinet for approval.

The Council's trailblazing Empty Homes Team intends to use a variety of innovative measures to tackle the problem of houses lying empty for years whilst the city's low earners struggle to find affordable housing.

Its three-year Empty Homes Strategy aims to increase the citys supply of decent, energy efficient and affordable private homes by:

• Converting and re-using empty properties
• Making the best use of brownfield sites
• Supporting the regeneration of deprived neighbourhoods
• Taking enforcement action against owners of long-term empty properties
• Encouraging more owners to let their properties

Councillor Peter Brookshaw, Cabinet member for Housing and Safer Communities, said: "It's a disgraceful waste to have so many homes standing empty for long periods of time when affordable housing is in such short supply.

"Besides anything else, these properties are a blight on their local neighbourhoods and often prove a magnet for anti social behaviour such as graffiti, fly tipping and vandalism."

Over the last five years the team has brought 505 empty homes back into use. Between April 2003 and April 2007 the number of private sector homes left empty for more than six months dropped by 1,596.

This was achieved by working closely on various projects with the nine registered social landlords which, together with the Council, make up the Plymouth Empty Homes Partnership.

These included:

• Devonport LOTS (Living Over the Shop) - a project, in partnership with Sarsen Housing Association, part of the Aster Group. Supported by £220,000 Devonport Regeneration Community Partnership funding, £102,000 Housing Corporation Temporary Social Housing Grant and £380,000 from owners of commercial premises. The scheme provides affordable flats for rent to local people.

• Working with owners of long term empty and often run down properties to persuade them either to renovate or sell

• Taking compulsory purchase action in the case of owners who were impossible to trace

Under its HouseLet scheme, the Empty Homes Team used 62 previously empty homes as good quality, temporary accommodation for nearly 350 homeless families who would otherwise have been housed in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation.

The team is currently working with other Council departments to draw up plans to force the sale of privately owned, long term empty properties. This will only happen in cases where owners owe the Council money and have either been unwilling or unable to deal with the property and its associated problems.