Clusters of Empty Homes

A £50m fund to tackle the worst concentrations of empty homes was announced on 21 November 2011 by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister as part of Laying the Foundations – a Housing Strategy for England.

This funding is additional to the £100m for Empty Homes already confirmed as part of the Affordable Homes Programme, and is intended to tackle concentrations of poor quality, empty homes in low demand areas. Tackling empty homes in these areas will require an intensive approach – refurbishing and reconfiguring homes, as well as improving the public realm and tackling wider issues in the local area.

The Clusters of Empty Homes fund was open to Local Authorities and HCA Investment Partners who can demonstrate that proposed schemes meet the following criteria: 

• A minimum of 100 homes brought back into use
• Delivery is within a distinct, compact area (ward or smaller) with over 10% of homes empty, and each cluster representing more than 25 empty homes
• Clear and demonstrable high level strategic fit and community support - as well as evidence of local authority commitment if the local authority is not the lead bidder
• In principle commitment to providing 100% match funding

The deadline for Stage 1 Expressions of Interest was 12 March, and the assessment of these has now concluded. A shortlist of successful bidders were invited to submit more detailed Stage 2 bids and a copy of the bidding guidance and template can be found below:

• Bidding template v1.1 – xls (211KB) (updated 19 April 2012)
• Bidding guidance accompanying stage 2 – PDF (100KB)

The assessment of the stage 2 bids has now been completed and funding allocations - csv (2KB) were announced on 29 May (number of homes indicated is the maximum number of empty homes tackled).

The bids received all demonstrated the following:

• a good fit with local priorities
• innovative approaches to delivery
• good value for money.

This resulted in a £10m increase in the funds available (from £50m to £60m) to tackle clusters of empty homes and enables all successful bids to proceed with only a marginal reduction (less than 2%) to the total resources requested.

This will bring over 3,600 long-term empty homes back into use

The following FAQ document will continue to be updated and bidders are asked to familiarise themselves with the content of this. 

• Clusters of Empty Homes programme frequently asked questions - PDF (60KB) - updated 5 March 2012

If you have any queries relating to stage 2 or the documentation please email clustersofemptyhomes@hca.gsi.gov.uk.