Thousands Of Empty London Properties Could Be Used

About 24,000 commercial properties in London that could be turned into temporary housing or workspaces are lying empty, a report has found. Research from Centre for London discovered the floor space of unused buildings amounted to about 1.8 million sq m (2,700 hectares) of land. The think tank said temporary schemes like Boxparks and gardens had proven popular but there was space for more. It has called for more flexibility to set up "meanwhile projects." Read more on the BBC website.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-45720960

Government To Allow Councils To Charge Double Council Tax On Empty Homes

Thousands of long-term empty properties across England could be brought back into use as the Government introduces new legislation allowing English councils to charge double the rate of council tax on homes left empty for years. The number of homes empty for six months or longer remains substantially lower than when records began in 2004, councils will be handed powers to levy additional charges on homes standing empty for two years or more. Councils will be able to use funds from the premium to keep council tax levels down. Read more on 24housing.

http://www.24housing.co.uk/news/councils-can-charge-double-the-rate-of-council-tax-on-empty-homes/

Priced-Out Tenants Accuse National Trust Of Creating ‘Ghost Villages’

Tenants of the National Trust have accused the charity of creating “ghost towns” out of the villages it owns by hiking up rents to unaffordable levels and then transforming the vacant properties into holiday lets. As the owner of many of Britain’s historic monuments and landscapes, the National Trust is considered to be the custodian of the nation’s heritage, yet it is also one of the UK’s largest landlords. Now some of its tenants claim it is “eroding national heritage” by pricing out local people in favour of tourists. The Trust made £44m from tenants last year, a rise of 39% since 2008, while wages have remained broadly static. It makes another £10m from holiday cottages, and has added about 100 to its portfolio in the past 10 years. In 2006, it was advertising its “unique collection of over 320 properties”; now it is offering 418. Read more on the Guardian website.

London Boroughs to Lose Thousands of Council Homes in First Five Years of New Right to Buy

Around 3,500 council homes would have to be sold in three London boroughs during the first five years of the government’s new right to buy.  Local authorities, including Camden, Haringey, Islington and Enfield, commissioned research ahead of the Queen's Speech to investigate how much of their 'higher-value' housing stock would be at risk from the policy. They found;

·         Selling off empty properties is not likely to be enough to pay for the right to buy discounts, to compensate housing associations for loss of asset, to build replacement homes and also contribute to a brownfield fund.

·         There would be an estimated time lag of at least two years from the sale of homes to replacement ones being built.

·         Families unable to get a council tenancy would face the prospect of remaining in overcrowded homes

·         Homeless households would have to enter or remain in temporary accommodation

Read more on 24dash.

Bedroom Tax Leaves 1,500 Larger Homes Empty and Councils with £20MILLION Rent Deficit

Councils are losing £20million in rent a year as the disastrous Bedroom Tax leaves homes empty. Nearly 1,500 multiple-bedroom properties are vacant because tenants cannot afford to move into them. Shadow Housing minister Emma Reynolds said : “Since the Bedroom Tax was introduced, rent arrears have soared. “But it’s also increasing the number of homes left empty because tenants can’t afford this unfair charge.” The waste of good homes comes despite 1.7 million people being stuck on council house waiting lists in England. New Government figures show the number of empty properties increased from 25,462 in 2012-13 to 26,958 in 2013-14 when the tax was introduced. As a result lost rental income went up from £107million to £127million.Read more on the Sunday People website.

Homes Left Empty 'Could Be Bought' By Council

Dozens of empty properties could be bought by Hastings council under compulsory purchase powers in a move to bring them back into use. The council said taking action would increase good quality housing in the town and reduce eyesores because some properties looked almost derelict. Since 2010, the authority has bought 42 homes to bring them back into occupation. Action is now being considered over a further 27 privately-owned homes. Read more on the BBC website.

Birmingham's Empty Homes Success Is a Nice Little Earner

Birmingham City Council has boasted that it success in bringing 1,400 privately owned empty properties back into use has given the city's housing stock a "massive boost" and brought financial gains too. The decision taken by the council to remove the Council Tax exemption for empty homes has meant that in 2013/14 Birmingham generated £777,000 of additional charges via the empty property premium. And by bringing the properties back into use, the city will also receive an additional £1.8 million, included in the overall New Homes Bonus of £4.6 million in 2014-15. Read more on the Housing Excellence website.

Tribunal Tells Councils to End Tax On Empty Homes

A tribunal has ordered local authorities to stop charging two housing associations thousands of pounds in council tax on empty properties. Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Ealing had refused to grant the landlords a six-month exemption after the government changed the rules on empty properties in April last year. Automatic exemptions were removed for private landlords, but housing associations which are registered charities should have been able to benefit from a specific exemption for charitable organisations. Despite this, the three boroughs refused to exempt housing associations, forcing them to pay council tax on void properties - a decision overturned by the valuation tribunal on 31 March. Read more on Inside Housing.

Council Tax: Empty Property – Parliamentary Written Answer

Steve McCabe: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for what reason the empty home premium starts when a property first becomes empty rather than when a property is bought with the intention of renovating and occupying it.  

Stephen Williams: The empty homes premium aims to reduce the total length of time for which properties are empty, not the length of time for which they are empty under a particular owner. Since the power came into effect on 1 April 2013, 239 councils in England have introduced the empty homes premium. The number of long-term empty homes fell by 38,009 between October 2012 and October 2013. Properties that are left empty due to the death of the occupier are exempt from council tax for up to six months after the granting of probate, or after letters of administration have been signed.

Welfare Reforms Are 'Pushing Landlords towards Tipping Point'

New research has revealed the cost of welfare reforms to social landlords. Six months after the introduction of the bedroom tax, patterns have emerged showing a North-South divide, a big/small landlord size split, rises in costs across the board and an increase in empty properties. The report, produced for HouseMark, shows that landlords with poor rent collection rates before the bedroom tax have lost out on millions of pounds since April as they struggle to collect more money direct from tenants. The situation is particularly acute in the North, where collection rates are lagging behind the UK median by as much as nine percentage points. Download a copy of the report from the HouseMark website.

Bedroom Tax Leaves Properties Standing Empty

Cuts to housing benefit designed to drive tenants out of large homes have led to streets with scores of empty properties across the North East, MPs have claimed.  South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck said tenants were refusing to move in to larger homes because they feared they would have to pay extra costs if their circumstances changed.  She said: “We are already seeing streets with scores of empty properties. The number of such properties is likely to rise and rise, while the former residents are becoming homeless or moving to the expensive private sector - moves that will increase the housing benefit bill further, and further stretch public finances.” Read more on the Newcastle Journal website.

100,000 Unoccupied Homes across Yorkshire

The Housing Crisis is a political and social problem that has set the agenda for many a political debate over the last few years, and so it may surprise some readers in Yorkshire that a survey carried out by Endsleigh Insurance found that there are nearly 100,000 unoccupied yet perfectly habitable homes across Yorkshire and the Humber alone. On a wider scale, the UK as a whole has an astounding 693,920 habitable yet vacant homes, which amounts to £115 billion in locked away value, or in more palpable terms, more than 8% of Britain’s £1.4 trillion debt.  Read more on the propertyreporter website. 

Council Slams Offices into Flats

Islington Council is trying to overturn government plans to turn empty office space into flats and to ease the proliferation of high street payday loan firms and betting shops. The council has now made an Article 4 direction to effectively overturn some of the permitted development rights introduced by the government in May. Under the revised General Permitted Development Order, residents and councils are powerless to object to, prevent, or impose conditions on certain types of development including:

*The change of existing shops, dentists, pubs and other uses over to a betting shop or pay day loan business.

*The change of any office building into housing.

Neither of these types of conversion now require planning permission, meaning, says the council, that "residents' rights to be notified in advance and to raise any objection are swept away".  Read more on 24dash.

Bedroom Tax – Parliamentary Oral Answer

Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab): The bedroom tax is going to hit people all around the country. It is bad enough in my borough of Southwark, but even worse in the Deputy Prime Minister’s city of Sheffield, where 5,027 people will be hit. This is not a policy to tackle under-occupation because these people cannot move, and they have no choice but to pay. That is why it is called the bedroom tax. People only get housing benefit if they are on a low income. Will he admit to the House that this is deeply unfair and will make people on low incomes worse off?

The Deputy Prime Minister: The problem that the right hon. and learned Lady cannot duck is that 1.8 million households are waiting to get on to social housing provision and 1 million bedrooms are standing empty. It does not make sense to have a benefits system that continues to support this mismatch between people needing places to live and empty bedrooms, and that is what we are trying to address. As with so many things in the reform of welfare, why were there no reforms of any meaningful description under Labour yet now Labour Members baulk at every single tough decision that we must take?

Report Calls for Rethink on Empty Homes in the North

Influential think -tank Centre for Cities concludes that national policies to increase housebuilding are working against bringing vacant properties into use in the north. It’s new report Cities Outlook says bringing empty homes into use is likely to be more beneficial than building new houses in areas with lower house prices.  But national housing policies are such as New Homes Bonus, designed to increase housing supply, may be unhelpful in areas with lower house prices by encouraging house building when improving the exisiting housing would be better.  Download the report from the Centre for Cities website.

Boost to Councils and Communities through the New Homes Bonus

Council efforts to get Britain building are to be rewarded with a multi-million pound New Homes Bonus.  Over the next year, England’s 353 councils are set to share a cash payout of £661 million, after delivering 142,000 new homes, including 58,000 affordable properties.  This funding also rewards councils for bringing 13,000 long-term empty properties back into use. The provisional allocation, to be paid in the 2013 to 2014 financial year, means councils will have received £1.3 billion through the New Homes Bonus scheme since its launch in April 2011.  Read more on the CLG website.