Reduce text sizeIncrease text sizeDefault coloursImproved contrastHigh contrastIn less than nine months Warwick District Council developed and implemented a proactive, owner centred approach to bringing 21 empty homes back into use.
Through a series of activities, including establishing a robust system to provide an accurate picture of the number of empty homes across the District, to engaging proactively with owners of empty properties, the Council has the foundations in place to untap the empty homes potential.
Warwick is a relatively affluent District and not immediately associated with empty homes. The housing stock contains a total of 59,356 dwellings, with 73.2% owner occupied and 10.5% private rented.
As of June 2011 there were 3103 people on the housing waiting list Over the last 5 years the population has grown by 7,000 people, representing an increase of 5.4%, with a projected population increase of 31.6% by 2031. In addition, the District has a high student population attracted to its University and Business School.
The District has an affordability issue and with only a small number of affordable homes completed in the last 2 years; empty homes offer an untapped opportunity to provide more affordable homes to local people. Warwick District Council’s approach to empty homes was formalised following the award of £53,000 grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in March 2010. Before this point, the Council lacked a dedicated staff resource on empty homes and their approach was mainly reactive, restricted to dealing with complaints from residents.
With the assistance of a grant from DCLG, Warwick District Council was able to allocate dedicated resources to work exclusively on empty homes on a proactive basis. A full time Empty Homes Officer was appointed to the Housing Strategy team in October 2010 following a long recruitment process.
As Warwick District Council had not employed a dedicated Empty Homes Officer for over 10 years the first task for the team was to identify the scale of the empty homes problem and the reasons why owners left them empty. Over the last 4 years, it was established that there have consistently been in excess of 600 long term empty properties within the District and the number has increased over the last year due to the slump in the housing market and the difficulties which owners have faced trying to sell a property in the difficult economic climate.
The team identified that over 50 properties had remained empty for at least 10 years. Working with the Council tax team and interrogating their database was critical in establishing the extent of the empty homes problem. Taking out second homes, the team identified that there were 846 long term empty homes in the District; defined as those left empty for over six months as of 30th August 2010.
Using Geographic Information System (GIS), digital mapping, the team identified the concentration of empty homes in the main urban areas of Leamington Spa, Warwick and Kenilworth. Leamington Spa had the largest number of empty properties. This provided the Council with intelligence on potential ‘hot spots’ where resources could be prioritised. All details were entered onto the Flare computer system to build up an accurate profile of the empty homes picture in the District. Using live Council tax information, the team began to issue a mailshot letter and questionnaire to owners of those properties.
The intention of this process was to open up dialogue with owners for the first time, to introduce the Empty Homes Officer as a point of contact and to offer the owners information and advice about bringing their empty home back into use. Taking the Council tax list and results of GIS mapping, the Empty Homes Officer had improved intelligence on the numbers of empty homes across the District. They visited as many of the properties as possible (459 as of the end of May 2011) to gather an accurate picture of the full list of empty homes.
After removing errors, second and holiday homes, the list of empty homes in the District was reduced down to 646, including those with exemption codes. Since 1st April 2011, the 50% discount that was previously available for long term empty properties has been removed. This is expected to have a positive effect in driving down the number of long term empty properties. To date, no grants or loans have been made available to owners, to assist with renovation of empty properties, although Section 106 funding is potentially available.
The team then began to identify a priority list of properties using a scoring matrix on the following criteria:
Highest scoring properties were given priority for action. Once priority properties had been identified, introducing this robust system for tracking and monitoring, utilising proactive, negotiated, supportive measures meant that the owner/landlord is at the centre of Warwick’s empty homes work. This approach yielded positive responses from owners and the team set about working with individuals on measures to help them bring their empty home back into use. Working proactively with owners and landlords of empty homes, the Council recently hosted the District’s first landlords’ forum, which attracted more than 70 landlords/owners.
This provided the Council with an opportunity to speak directly to landlords and owners, to understand the issues facing both parties. Following the success of the first event the Forum is set to meet on a quarterly basis and be chaired by a local landlord, along with a steering group, it will support the actions emerging from the Council’s Empty Homes Strategy. Warwick’s Empty Homes Strategy, through to 2014, has a commitment to engage with owners to help them deal proactively with empty properties.
It is envisaged that the Strategy will be endorsed by the Council in August 2011. As part of its proactive approach to tackling empty homes the Housing Strategy team is implementing a series of objectives to help them:
Warwick Council continues to raise awareness of empty homes across the District through their quarterly newsletter which goes out to residents. In addition, they recently published an empty homes leaflet for owners of empty properties and residents who want to know what to do about an empty home in their neighbourhood.
The newsletter and leaflet prompts residents and owners to contact the Council and has resulted in a general ‘buzz’ around the issue. Internally, the Council has established strong relationships with other teams to pool resources to deal with the District’s empty homes. The internal empty homes’ steering group, including departments such as, Environmental Health, Planning and Building Control, Council tax, and the Fire and Rescue service has been drawn together to work on empty homes using a case load approach.
This approach identifies which team is best placed within the Council to deal with the empty home, which in turn avoids duplication of resources and time. Given the Housing Strategy team was effectively starting afresh in their approach to empty homes in the District, a significant amount of work had to be done to first of all identify and then prioritise the properties before embarking on the process of negotiation with owners and implementation of the action plan. That said; the team were keen to get some quick positive outcomes and set themselves a stretching target of bringing 75 empty properties back into use in the first year of the programme.
Working proactively with owners, and within a relatively short space of time, the team has brought 21 empty homes back into use increasing the provision of housing in the District to help meet local housing need. Whilst the team was working to ascertain an accurate picture on the number of empty homes in the District, the coalition government introduced the New Homes Bonus, an incentive for Councils to match fund the additional council tax raised for properties brought back into use.
The introduction of this Bonus meant that both the Housing Strategy and Council tax teams had to re-examine the classification codes which applied to empty homes under the new incentive, so that working collaboratively they were bringing homes back into use which qualified for the Bonus. It is anticipated that the funding secured under the New Homes Bonus will be used by the Council for future activity to improve local facilities and communities and bring more long term empty properties back into use.
It is early days for Warwick District Council in terms of assessing the long term impact of their work. However, in a short space of time they have brought 21 empty homes back into use, have clear intelligence on the empty homes picture, established an owner centred approach to empty homes and have the foundations in place to continue to realise the potential of Warwick’s empty homes.
Through intelligence gathering, awareness raising and partnership working the team has elevated the issue and potential that empty homes can have in providing desperately needed homes to meet the District’s housing need. The internal empty homes’ steering group, with a case load approach to bringing empty homes back into use, has the potential to yield greater returns by utilising existing Council resources.
Skilful negotiation with empty home owners is the keystone of Warwick’s work, and establishing a Landlords’ Forum will help to support this activity through a District wide partnership approach. Warwick now has a clear framework in place to help focus their efforts on bringing empty homes back into use.
Satnam Kaur
Housing Strategy Manager
Paul Hughes
Private Sector
Housing Manager Warwick District Council
Riverside House Milverton Leamington Spa CV32 5HZ
Tel: 01926 456 422
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