According to Shelter Cymru and the Chartered Institute of Housing, there are an estimated 26,407 empty properties in Wales at the moment. And this doesn’t include houses waiting for a new tenant or that have only just become empty, these are properties that have been empty for at least six months. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, there are at least 91,000 households on the waiting list for social properties in Wales.  

Read that again. Yes, I said households, not individuals. 

But there are more than 91,000 people wanting a property. I’m not on a social housing waiting list, but I’d quite like a house. Do I have any hope of getting one in the next ten years? Not a pissing chance. Unless I can find a mortgage lender that will accept a deposit of £245 and a used X-Box, I think I can count myself out. But there are people who are more financially stable who would love a chance at home ownership. 

So, let’s review what we have learnt so far. We have lots of empty homes. We have lots of people who want to rent a house, and, we have lots of people who want to buy a house. In the words of a popular TV Meerkat (who runs the UK’s leading site for comparing Meerkats), Simples. 

Unfortunately not.  

It seems that the government can’t really think of a way to get from this situation, to getting the 26,000 properties back into use. A couple of weeks ago the Welsh Liberal Democrats used one of our minority party debates to suggest some ideas to the government. You’d think they’d be grateful and listen to our cunning plans, you’d be wrong.

What the Welsh Liberal Democrats have proposed is that councils should be given extra powers to raise the level of council tax on properties that have been empty for longer periods of time. For example, if you leave your property empty for two years, you’d pay 200% council tax, three years, 300% and so on. The affect of this would not only be to penalise landlords for leaving properties empty, and encourage them to get their properties back onto the market, but it would also compensate the community for the lose of the asset and give the council additional revenue. This could then be used to employ more empty property officers to try and force more landlords into putting their properties back onto the market. 

Currently, council’s have limited powers to deal with empty properties. They do have a legal recourse known as an ‘Empty Dwelling Management Order’ or EDMO, but these are complex, expensive and require a vast amount of work from the council. They are so complex that I simply cannot be arsed explaining how they work. Suffice to say they don’t actually work very well, seeing as there is yet to be a single one that has actually returned a property to the market (as far as I am aware anyway). 

Another power they have is that of a Compulsory Purchase Order, where they council essentially sells it on the owners behalf, whether the owner likes it or not. Given that these are a drastic step, it’s safe to assume this is not the answer in most cases. These are time consuming and complex as well, but not helped by the government.  

If a council wants to use a CPO, they have to go through the Planning Inspectorate. Which is strange, given there is absolutely no planning consideration for them to look at. The house is a house, when it is sold, it is sold as a house. Should the new owner want to make it something other than a house, they will have to apply for planning permission anyway. So why are councils having to waste time, resources and effort going through planning processes that aren’t needed? 

Even when they do get to the Welsh Assembly Government, they have a habit of sitting on them for a couple of months while they……well, I don’t know what they’re doing during that time. Probably nothing. Sometimes a public enquiry is required, but it takes the government a further six months to arrange that.  

All this government bureaucracy significantly slows down the process, making things more difficult for the council and keeping properties empty for longer.  

If the government is serious, as it claims, about tackling the problems with empty homes then they would give councils more powers to tackle the problem. But they have to allow councils to make better use of the powers that they already have by being a base of support rather than an active hindrance.  

Instead of slowing down processes, why doesn’t the government see what it can do to speed things up? Instead of limiting powers, what can they do to extend them? We’ve suggested an idea, and we know that the government likes to steal our ideas from time to time.  

Feel free to do it again.

Related posts:

1. Welsh Liberal Democrats call for empty home renovation grants
2. Coming home to roost
3. Trouble at home