Empty Homes Week 2007
3rd- 7th December 2007
To mark National Empty Homes Week of Action 3rd- 7th December, independent charity The Empty Homes Agency is appealing to the public to report long-term empty homes to them to help bring them back into use.
“There are 663,000 wasted empty homes in England” says Chief Executive David Ireland “ the government is fixated on just building more homes, but we are convinced that returning more empty homes to use should be part of the solution too. All too often empty homes are overlooked and nobody takes responsibility for getting them into use. We are happy to provide advice to owners, and work with others to seek a solution to empty homes that are reported to us”
The Empty Homes Agency believes that housing supply needs can be partly met by a concerted effort to reduce the numbers of empty homes in England. We believe that this can be achieved by:
- Making it more cost effective for owners of empty homes to bring them back into use by reducing the VAT on refurbishment of empty homes to 5% or less for properties empty for more than a year.
- Removing the public subsidy currently offered to owners of empty homes through council tax discounts and exemptions. We advocate replacing the current system with a 50 % discount for one year to encourage owners to renovate them, and thereafter charge full council tax
- Introducing challenging national and regional targets to reduce the numbers of empty homes
- Putting a statutory duty on local authorities to tackle long-term empty homes in their area.
- Putting a duty on public sector landlords to publicly report their long-term empty homes annually.
- Ensuring that local authority empty homes work is not cut at the expense of funding for housebuilding.
To report empty homes to the Empty Homes Agency log on to www.emptyhomes.com or phone 0870 901 6303
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