Could Do Better

Local authorities are now judged on their effectiveness at getting empty homes back into use. Many of them are very good at it and deserve praise. Others aren’t. A few months ago I published a list of some of the poorest performing local authorities. Here is the latest list. This time I have added some local authorities that brought properties back into use but in my view not enough to make much of an impact. Bringing 4 properties back into use would be quite good if the local authority only had 25 empty properties in it’s area, but it’s not so impressive if they have 3,000. Some local authorities did not report the numbers of long term empty homes in their area. In these cases I have added the figure from other sources of data but have preceded it with the word “about”. Between the 60 of them these local authorities brought 25 properties back into use out of a total of 31,000 long-term empty homes

I wrote to the Director of Housing in all of these local authorities back in August and asked if I could help. Only four of them replied, all said they were intending to improve this year. Good for them. Let’s hope the other 54 follow suit.

The first number is the number of long term private empty homes in the council's area, the second is the number they brought back into use last year :

Arun, 840, 2
Barrow-in-Furness, 500, 0
Berwick, about 200, 0
Blaby, about 262, 0
Boston, 500, 0
Bracknell Forest, 335, 0
Caradon, 504, 0
Castle Morpeth, 475, 0
Castle Point, 529, 0
Chester-Le-Street, 236, 0
Copeland, 998, 0
Craven, 227, 0
Daventry, 139, 0
East Dorset, 140, 0
Epping, 917, 0
Gedling, 895, 0
Gloucester, 804, 0
Harlow, about 405, 0
Hart, 150, 0
Havant, 100, 0
Havering, 1,079, 1
Kings Lynn, 1,324, 2
Maldon, 360, 0
Malvern Hills, 314, 0
Mid Sussex, 511, 1
Newark and Sherwood, 740, 1
North Cornwall, 186, 0
North Dorset, 664, 1
North Kesteven, 700, 0
North Warwickshire, 412, 0
Oswestry, 244, 0
Oxford, 138, 0
Pendle, 1,752, 5
Purbeck, 72, 0
Reading, 806, 0
Richmondshire, 287, 0
Rochford, 456, 0
Rushcliffe, 327, 0
Ryedale, 269, 1
Rutland, 96, 0
Sefton, 2,898, 4
South Cambridgeshire, 507, 0
Stafford, 437, 0
Surrey Heath, 186, 0
Tandridge, 523, 0
Tendring, 928, 3
Teesdale, 241, 0
Torbay, 99, 0
Tynedale, 350, 0
Uttlesford, 475, 0
Wansbeck, 590, 0
Warwick, 1,250, 3
Waveney, 962, 0
Wealden, 563, 0
Welwyn, 328, 0
West Berkshire, 561, 0
West Devon, 290, 1
West Oxfordshire, 218, 0
West Somerset, 194, 0
Winchester, 425, 0
Wokingham, 475, 0