Shelter Cymru has estimated that there are 26,000 empty private homes in Wales, which by anybody’s estimation is a huge number. I have several in my community, including one next door to me, that have been lying empty for years. I have never understood why anybody would allow a valuable asset such as a house to lie empty and neglected for so long, irrespective of the moral issues of its potential as a home for a family who can not otherwise afford to get onto the property market.
The powers available to local councils are limited. Essentially, they can cajole owners but they cannot force them to bring a property back into use. Councils can take legal action if there is a statutory nuisance such as damp infiltrating adjacent homes but that is limited to stopping the nuisance not demanding the sale or re-occupation of the property.
There is such a thing as an Empty Dwelling Management Order that enables a Council to take occupation of an abandoned house, bring it up to scratch and rent it out for a period of time, I think for up to ten years. However, there are restrictions on the use of these powers.
Firstly, the local council has to show that it has been unable to persuade the owner to bring the property back into use and considers this action as a last resort. They have to get approval to make an interim EDMO from an independent Residential Property Tribunal, which must be satisfied that the property has been unoccupied for at least six months, that there is no reasonable prospect of it being occupied in the near future and that if they grant the order they must be content that the Council can get it occupied.
The Tribunal must also consider how making an order would impact on the property rights of the owner and is not obliged to grant authorisation if it considers there are good reasons not to do so. The legislation also provides rights for owners to appeal against decisions made by councils, have EDMOs brought to an end early and to sell properties even while an EDMO is in force.
EDMOs also cannot apply to second homes or holiday homes, properties that are in the process of being sold or let or that are going through probate or where probate was obtained within the previous six months.
The key obstacle for many councils however is that they must fund any works needed to make a property habitable and must normally recoup their costs from rental income. This means that any property targeted for an EDMO must be in a reasonable condition and the Council must have a realistic expectation that the EDMO will not be brought to an end prematurely, leaving them out of pocket.
It is not surprising therefore that EDMOs are not widely used in Wales. In fact only one has been sought and that is in Swansea. The idea that these are a panacea to solve the problems of empty homes is false. More needs to be done and in my view owners of homes that have been lying empty for two years or more should be penalised for the blight that they are bringing on local communities.
As Shelter say: Empty properties represent waste, financial expense and missed opportunity for providing much needed affordable housing for people in Wales. They can blight communities, attract fly tipping, vandals and squatters and tie up the resources of the council and the emergency services.
Living next to an empty property can devalue a home by 18%. Unsightly properties deter investment in an area and can lead to decline. The absence of adequate housing whether in terms of quantity, quality or size has also significant adverse impacts upon people’s health.
That is why I have advocated that Councils should have the power to raise Council tax exponentially on such empty properties both to give the owner an incentive to do something to it such as bringing it back into use but also to make him or her pay extra into the community for the problems they are bringing to it. So far the Welsh Government have been deaf to the case for this change.
This is not enough though. We need a Wales-wide empty homes strategy that seeks to use existing resources to better manage the problem and turn some of these 26,000 properties into usable affordable homes. That is also not forthcoming from the One Wales Government.
I was heartened therefore to see that Shelter Wales are doing something on this issue and that they appear to have some resources from the Welsh Government to help them. So far this amounts to a website where people can report empty homes.
Shelter say that the purpose of the project is to support local authorities and their partners make more effective use of privately owned empty homes to meet housing need, by providing free advice, consultancy and good practice exchanges to accelerate current work in this area. It is a start I suppose but it is hardly the decisive action I would like to see from the Government on this issue.
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