Empty Homes Making the news in England's most vacant region - the South West

BBC South West have been following up on our work drawing attention to rising vacancy in Bristol and the South West and looking at the tools which are currently available to local councils attempting to bring more empty homes back into residential use.

The article draws attention to the fact that Empty Dwelling Management Orders [EDMOs] have now fallen out of use, due to their ineffectiveness and usefully links to another story in The Lead revealing that last year no council successfully applied for an EDMO, although this is a tool that is supposedly the primary specialist power available to them to deal with those leaving homes empty.

We believe that it is time for reform of the EDMO power and that a programme of investment to bring wasted homes back into use is long overdue.

The article also draws attention to the absence of such a national programme to bring empty homes back into use - despite the success of earlier initiatives and flags up a recent example of, dare we say it, ‘Manchesterism’ - or at any rate of devolution in action in Manchester, stating:

‘Greater Manchester Combined Authority recently launched a scheme giving £11.7m to local councils to bring 400 empty homes back into use, so they can be used by homeless families.

Ho Marris, who sits on the West of England Combined Authority (Weca) Strategic Place Partnership board, said it was "frustrating" that it had recently decided a similar scheme wouldn't be worth pursuing.

Weca said the board agreed in March that it would keep the issue under review.'

Time to think again about that review?

The BBC article also looks at a range of local interventions by councils in the South West to assess what seems to be working, but as with so many other issues, at Action on Empty Homes we can’t help feeling that what is really urgently needed is more resource to back all of these interventions, because in the final analysis these will all save public money, both directly where homes are used to reduce the dependence of local councils on expensive temporary accommodation for homeless families; and indirectly in reducing the callouts to emergency and support services to deal with abandoned property which is making neighbours lives a misery, as the BBC has also previously reported, using examples from Bristol such as the infamous former Kernow Sound building.

Read the BBC South West story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdejwk9z9jpo

To see how England’s region’s compare and the startling changes in numbers of long-term empty homes over the last decade see our analysis here