Durham Council's fresh approach to empty homes

Background

As part of the 2009 structural changes to the local government in England, the seven district councils within the Durham County Council area were abolished.  The County Council assumed their functions and became a unitary authority in April 2009, replacing the two-tier system of a county council providing strategic services and seven district councils providing more local facilities. 

The impact of this change had operational repercussions into the best part of 2010 with teams needing to implement a new way of working and get to grips with the sheer size of the area for which they were now responsible.  The county Council now had a range of different housing markets and tenures to manage and only 1.5 full time equivalent empty property officers to cover the entire county.  The strategic approach to empty homes had been lacking so the priority was to build a new team and agree a strategy to tackle the 6000 empty homes that fell under the team’s responsibility.

In 2010, the empty homes team doubled in capacity to three full-time empty property officers.  The newly formed team, headed up by David Randall, team leader, quickly set about categorising the empty homes across the county and developing action plans to bring them back into use.  The team work alongside six private landlord initiatives officers whose responsibility is to provide advice and support to landlords and tenants in the private rented sector within identified priority areas, helping to improve property and management standards.

It became clear early on that both teams needed expert legal advice to gain access to the council tax database and deal with the more difficult cases.  For that reason a solicitor was seconded into the teams to offer specialist support and ensure all interventions were legally watertight. 

Project

Categorising properties was the first priority for the new team.  The team analysed the council tax database to identify that of the 6000 empty properties that had been empty for more than six months across the county, approximately 4000 were long-term empty and of interest to the empty properties team.

The team then identified the key hot-spots for empty homes across the county and agreed to focus on eight priority ‘regeneration areas’ in line with the direction set out in the private sector housing strategy, which is due for publication.  The regeneration areas are where most regeneration activity is taking place and are mainly ‘legacy’ schemes from the former District Councils.

The regeneration areas presented the most significant issues in terms of empty homes. They are areas were there have been problems for a long time and some regeneration work has taken place. There are large numbers of voids in the areas - in some cases being the majority of some streets.  The property type is usually terraced with properties boarded up, in disrepair and in areas of low demand.

The strategy for the team was to adopt a project management style approach and spend 80% of their time working on the regeneration areas.  A project leader was allocated to each area and action plans have been developed and implemented working in partnership with other local agencies such as the police, registered providers and resident’s associations.  Regular stakeholder meetings are held to discuss issues and broker solutions.

The remaining 20% of time is spent working outside these areas primarily working closely with owners to provide advice and support to bring empty homes back into use.

A robust performance management system is in place to monitor and review progress and the overall performance is reviewed by senior management at regular performance management clinics.

Targets for 2010 were to bring:

10 properties back into use in the regeneration areas

20 in selective licensing areas. These were areas that had been identified as having a high number of private rented sector properties with high levels of anti-social behaviour attributable to the private tenants. In some cases these areas overlap with the intervention areas.

50 outside of these areas

This target will increase year on year subject to assessment and evaluation after the first year.

During the period of prioritisation of empty homes, the team conducted a SWOT analysis on the range of tools available to bring empty homes back into use.  Considering the range of issues the team were facing, from whole streets of empty homes in declining pit villages, to pockets of long-term empty homes in areas of high demand, the team were keen to adopt a broad range of tools that dealt with cases in an individual manner.  The team therefore identified four tools that they would use to tackle empty homes:

• Empty Dwelling Management Orders
• private sector leasing scheme
• enforced sale
• negotiation. 

Given the complexity of issues in the regeneration areas, all four tools are being implemented as part of the action plans.  Outside of these areas the focus was on negotiation with owners and proactive support and communication with enforcement as a last resort.

All of this activity will result in funding coming back in to the Council, or at least will result in no cost.  The team will not be using Compulsory Purchase Orders unless certain conditions dictate there’s a need for this tool.

The strategy for the team has been to focus on the strategic proactive work, tackling the worst cases of empty homes across the district.  This focus is possible due to a working protocol with the environmental health team that sees them picking up the more reactive work dealing with complaints from owners.  A good working relationship exists between the two teams and this has had a successful impact to date.

An empty property definition has been developed that helps to identify which properties to prioritise and provides a strong justification of when not to intervene. 

Impact

The team are currently working with owners across the county on over 300 properties using the negotiation and enforcement tools.  30 properties have already been brought back into use (as at December 2010) and targets are on course to be achieved.  7 of these are in the regeneration areas, 8 within the selective licensing and 15 properties are outside these areas.  All of these properties were brought back into use using sustained and successful negotiation with owners.  The quick wins so far have been the properties within the non-selective licensing areas, where the team have been able to put landlords in touch with each other and provide help and assistance to bring homes back into use.

One particular story, which evidences the determined efforts of the team to bring properties back into use, concerns two three-bed detached houses on a good private estate in the north of County Durham.  The properties haven’t been lived in since they were built in 1976 and despite involvement by various council officers over the years the owners have not made any serious attempts to bring them back into use.  The empty homes team has tried to negotiate and assist the owners to achieve a positive result but this appears to have failed.  While continuing to work with the owners, a case is now being prepared for two empty dwelling management orders. Neighbours are “over the moon” that something that will be done at last.

Establishing the entire team and co-ordinating the workload has strengthened relationships and improved communication across the council and externally. Staff have a clearer understanding of the requirements of their role and the role of the wider team and partners on empty homes work.  More specifically:

• The prioritisation and assessment process provides staff with greater clarity on which empty properties to target.  Staff are more confident in dealing with issues and providing advice to members, owners, landlords and the wider community about properties that do/do not fulfil the criteria and when to intervene.

• Co-ordinating and sharing the workload across the teams for each area and using a project management approach has provided a strong ‘support network’ amongst colleagues. Staff, partners and stakeholders do not feel isolated and can readily share issues and seek advice.

• Team members have enhanced their knowledge and skill sets through the support and legal expertise provided by the seconded solicitor.  Equally the solicitor now has a stronger grasp of housing issues and will be able to share this with the legal team, facilitating an effective knowledge transfer across teams.

• The team have a strong presence at the multi agency problem solving groups that have been set up in each of the regeneration areas with other representatives including the police, fire service, registered providers and community groups.  The groups are a useful vehicle to identify issues, particularly around problem or blighted properties, share information and broker solutions.

• Registered providers in the regeneration areas are more engaged in the process and have a stronger commitment on working to bring void properties back into use.

• Residents have a stronger presence and are more engaged in the work through the stakeholder steering group meetings (as part of the communication strategy within the action plans). 

Lessons Learned

• Adopting a co-ordinated ‘whole team’ approach to manage the empty homes work, strengthens partnership working, improves efficiency, removes duplication and maximises service delivery.  

• Applying a project management style to organise and monitor the workload provides greater clarity on roles, responsibilities and timescales ensuring smarter delivery and an enhanced overall end product.

• Developing an empty property definition helps to identify which properties to prioritise and provides a strong justification for properties that do/do not fulfil the criteria.  This can prove particularly useful when targeting properties and providing the rationale behind decisions to members, partners and the community.

• Understanding the entire empty homes picture when measuring and reporting on performance can help to provide a true reflection of scale.  Its important to recognise the numbers of properties your actually working with compared to the physical outputs of those that have been brought back into use, which in many cases can be much smaller in number.

• Learning from previous interventions and being realistic with timeframes and delivery options can help when deciding on the best course of action.  Sharing expertise and facilitating knowledge exchange across teams can improve overall effectiveness. 

Reference

David Randall,

Empty Homes Team Leader

Durham County Council, Council Offices, Green Lane, Spennymoor, County Durham, DL16 6JQ

Tel: 03000 261088

www.durham.gov.uk

david.randall@durham.gov.uk