The Empty Homes Working Group - Newcastle City Council

Background

The Council was concerned with empty voids in the city which caused deprivation. Reducing the number of empty homes required a straight forward strategy.

The Council set the following objectives:

• Prevention - to stop properties from becoming empty
• Provide a reactive service for individual empty properties
• Being proactive in specific areas with high levels of empty units

A higher number of empty houses were in the private rented sector. It was recognised that the Council needed to build on the existing relationships to support, engage and liaise with private landlords and offers a range of services, such as advertising of vacant properties, training for landlord, accreditation and rent deposit scheme.

The strategic lead was given to the Housing Development & Partnership Management team who collaborated with environmental health, building control and planning officers.
 

Project

The project is coordinating existing services within the council and improving the flow of information to respond to empty homes across the local authority. The vacant properties were dealt by officers across the numerous directorates and departments which lead to miscommunication and also duplication of work, as two officers might be working on the same property. A working group was established to overcome the problems and implement a collaborative working approach.

The Empty Homes Working Group, through a scoring system, prioritises the actions required to bring properties back into use.

The scoring considers the following factors:

• Location of the property to check if the Council is undergoing renewal work in the area and if the area is marked for targeted interventions
• State and condition of the property, if the property is boarded up it gets a higher score then if the property is just a visible void (i.e. not boarded but visibly empty).
• Number of complaints made about the empty property, which gives the property an additional scoring point.

Throughout the different stages the property will get a score of up to 100. All the data is analysed and properties that obtain a score between 90 and 100 become top priority for the Council. This analysis is discussed amongst the Working Group to agree on individual actions plan. This does not mean that any properties scoring below 90 are not tackled.

The scoring system is extremely fluid and beneficial to the Council; with the scores altered to reflect deterioration or improvement in the empty property. As a result properties can move up and down the priority list over time and changes in scores are discussed at the Working Group with the officer thereby giving an opportunity to agree changes in the action plans.

Having a dedicated group working on empty homes has given some power to managers to make decisions on work prioritisation and request for additional resources.

Impact

The aims are ongoing, as there is no end date, through the empty homes project; the Council has seen improved working relationships and seen properties being brought into use.

The project began in 2007, at that time 2.25% of the properties were officially unoccupied for greater than 6 months. In 2011, the numbers decreased to just less than 1.8%.Showing a 20% drop in the last four years.

Area based work within the Greater High Cross Renewal Area has seen the long-term empty properties drop from 48 in 2007 to 23. A lot of Council interventions have taken place to try and deal with the underlying reasons for empty homes such as the failing housing market and deprivation this has include securing HMR Pathfinder funding for a renewal scheme to improvements to the property exteriors.

As a result of the linking empty homes actions with other Renewal Activities in the High Cross Area there has been significant improvement in the perception of the area. A resident satisfaction survey was conducted in 2004; 2008 and 2011 to compare how the area has improved, through the survey it was identified that 19% of the residents said, the houses in the areas were in poor condition in 2004 this has now dropped to 4% in 2011. The survey also looked at the community sprit; this has gone up to 65% in 2011 from 41% previously. The results show that the area has improved as well with resident’s dissatisfaction with the neighbourhood as a place to live down to 10% in 2011 compared to 31% in 2004.

The project’s finance model is based on using existing resources; this no additional budgets have been allocated. The team has to be proactive and pooled officers from across various departments. Walk-about surveys were undertaken to identify new voids, and all the owners were contacted to help bring their property back into use.

Through the work of the team in 2011, 142 properties have been brought back into use across the city. In addition 229 properties in the private rented service have been prevented from being empty; this has helped save houses in short-term from becoming long-term empty.

Success stories include, Scarborough Road where a block of derelict, boarded up flats owned by two different landlords were renovated and brought back into use. The flats were fire damaged and required a lot of external improvements; it became clear that there were financial aspects hindering the development work.

The Council served notice to demolish or improve through their enforcement team which restarted, negotiations, the Council got the owners together and agreed to sell the flats to an investor, who renovated the flats to an accredited standard. Now all the flats are now fully furnished and have tenants living in them. The area has improved with the renovation of a derelict block of flats. The impact that the four properties have had on that street is significant, as it was causing residents to leave there houses or existing flats hard to rent. Since these four flats have been brought back into the other voids have been brought back into use as well.

Next Steps:
The team seeking additional resources and funding from the Council to expand the tools available to work on long-term problem empties. By strengthen the enforcement options such as Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO), Empty Dwelling Management Order (EDMOs) and enforced sales. Bid for the Empty Homes Bonus; expand the private rented service to support landlords with property management and private sector leasing. Apply for Homes and Communities Agency Grant to work with registered providers.

Lessons Learned

• Research and find out the empty properties in the area, find out the history and understand the conditions of the area so an appropriate strategy can be created and implemented.
• Make sure that the story behind each property is clearly laid out.
• An individual action plan should be devised to deal with a specific property.
• Essential to get the right partners working from the start of the project, to avoid delays and misjudgements.
• Once the objectives are set; make sure consistent messages go out; so when other departments are speaking with the residents they are no discrepancies in the messages.
• Have an efficient scoring system that helps bring out the problems; but also make sure everyone understands the system to enable swift cross departmental working relationships.
• Keeping communication channels open between departments.
• Having a clear framework where team roles are clearly defined but also develop a culture where the teams are flexible to bring in their expertise to work on an empty property.

Reference

Colin White
Private Sector Housing Renewal Officer
Housing Development & Partnership Management
Strategic Housing, Planning and Transportation
Environment and Regeneration Directorate
Newcastle City Council
10th Floor,
Civic Centre
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8QN
T: +44 (0)191 277 7839
E:colin.white@newcastle.gov.uk
W: newcastle.gov.uk