Empty Property – Parliamentary Written Answer

Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what assessment he has made of progress on his Department's policy to return empty homes to use.
Grant Shapps: Through the New Homes Bonus we have introduced a powerful new incentive scheme, for tackling empty homes. In the first year alone, around 16,000 long-term empty homes were brought back into use and rewarded through the New Homes Bonus scheme. In addition, we have set aside £100 million from the Affordable Homes Programme to bring empty homes back into use as affordable housing. This funding will be available from April 2012 until March 2015 and we will shortly be publishing the detailed bidding guidance to enable both registered providers of social housing and community and voluntary groups to apply. We expect that this will generate innovative good practice as well as bringing at least 3,300 empty homes back into use. We have also worked with the Homes and Communities Agency to launch an online Empty Homes Toolkit(1) and an interactive mapping toolkit(2 )which provide information and practical advice on tackling empty homes. The Empty Homes Toolkit is the most popular resource on the agency website and is one of the top 10 most popular pages on the site.
(1) http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/news/new-toolkits-tackle-englands-734000-empty-homes
(2) This toolkit is available to local authorities.