All councils in England and Wales have powers to bring empty homes back into use. Many are very good at it, some are not. Most councils seek to persuade and help the owner to bring their property back into use; they only use legal powers such as Empty Dwelling Management Orders when help and persuasion have failed.
Most empty homes are brought back into use eventually by their owner. But in many cases this takes years. Empty homes often decline fast – they become overrun with weeds and attacked by the weather. They are often used by squatters, fly tippers, vandals and are sometimes subject to arson. The whole neighbourhood suffers waiting for the owner to deal with their property.
Councils help and persuade owners to bring their properties into use faster. Even so the process can be slow, especially if the property is in very poor repair or the owner is unwilling to do anything. In most cases it takes six months before you can expect to see anything change, occasionally longer. This doesn’t mean the council isn’t doing anything, which is why we encourage councils to update the website so you can see what is happening.
We will contact you twice (a month and six months after you report the empty home) so you can tell us what has happened. If the council doesn’t do anything, or you think their response is inadequate we will advise you what you can do next.
If the empty home is owned by the government or one its agencies, councils are often powerless to help. However you might be able to take action directly yourself using a PROD: http://www.emptyhomes.com/usefulinformation/policy_docs/prods.html
Yes. Councils can make a real difference, but they have lots of things to do. Many councils only deal with empty homes that are reported to them. If people do not report empty homes, councils may well conclude that other areas of work are more important.
There are over 840,000 empty homes in the UK. The Empty Homes Agency estimates that over half of these are unnecessarily empty. The effect of this is to significantly reduce the available housing stock fuelling the UK’s housing crisis. A by-product of this waste is that far greater pressure is put on building land as more homes are built to meet the shortfall. The Empty Homes Agency estimate that bringing just a quarter of the UK’s empty homes into use would provide homes for 700,000 people, save 160 square kilometres of land and save 10 million tonnes of CO2 over building the same number of new homes.