Last Wednesday I went to Admiralty House in Whitehall, former 'grace and favour' residence of John Prescott.
I was invited to a government seminar on tackling the problem of empty homes organised by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG).
This seminar was set up at the request of ministers as the issue of empty homes has risen up the national political agenda in recent months.
Other attendees included David Ireland, Chief Executive of the campaigning charity the Empty Homes Agency, officers from Manchester City Council's private sector team, civil servants, and a small selection of councillors and officers from other councils. I was one of only about three councillors at the event invited, I guess, because of my track record campaigning for action to reduce the (above average) number of empty properties in Reading.
It was fascinating to see inside government and also to get the chance to put my views directly to ministers about the need for action on this issue. Admiralty House is a beautiful venue with lots of lovely paintings and antique furniture (although having recently seen In The Loop at the cinema I did keep expecting an angry press officer marching in at any moment!) It's more or less just used for events now, I think.
Iain Wright MP , parliamentary under secretary at CLG, hosted the event and to be fair to him did seem genuinely keen to understand why more progress was not being made to reduce the thousands of empty homes in England - the EHA puts this figure currently at around 760,000.
The consensus from those gathered was not that councils lacked the right legal powers, more that not all councils see this issue as a priority for them and many do not have enough resources to tackle the problem effectively. I know for example that one council just outside Reading officers have only two hours per week to devote to the issue, compared to our one full time officer. Manchester City Council on the other hand has a whole team of people working on empty homes.
Anyway, it was clear from talking to them that the civil servants did not have much of a clue about what was going on locally and rely heavily on feedback from people on the frontline. It must be hard making policy when you don't know the true picture out there (and this may explain why we end up with so many crazy diktats from government!) For that reason I thought the seminar was a worthwhile exercise and may mean that a more thoughtful policy comes out of Whitehall at some stage (or not!)
When I spoke to our empty homes officer in Reading before I attended the event to get his view as to what the biggest single barrier is to reducing the number of empty homes locally he told me it was the fact that for years the issue had effectively been forgotten about and nothing had been done.
Iain Wright made a short speech at the event and stated "I cannot understand why all councils and councillors are not motivated to do something about empty homes". Speaking as a former councillor he said he thought that councillors would have had pressure from their constituents to act, if nothing else.
I said that the reality in some areas is much different and asked him the following question:
"Does the Minister know, how many councils a) have an empty homes strategy b) have dedicated resources to tackling the problem of empty homes?
Needless to say Iain Wright did not know and said he would need to check the facts with his officials. Having a senior politician failing to answer a straightforward question like this I felt like to an extent I had arrived. At a national level that's what political debate is like, I fear, with people in senior positions knowing often less than you might expect or hope for.
I felt I had the edge, having investigated the issue at a local level for the past two years and needn't have worried about whether or not I was senior enought to attend: by the end I felt I must have been some kind of expert the looks the civil servants were giving me!
Given the setting I did my best not to score a political point at the meeting but the simple fact is that not all councils are proactively reducing the number of empty homes in their areas and more to the point, for years, Labour-run Reading Borough Council had no empty homes strategy and did nothing about the problem. I would dearly loved to have pointed this simple fact out to Mr Wright but it seemed churlish at the time.
David Ireland in his speech acknowledged the role played by local campaigners like me who took up the issue of empty homes and ran with it. He spoke elogquently about the scandal of thousands of newly-built executive flats lying empty in their thousands from Salford to South London.
Something David said that may seem obvious but I thought was nonetheless shocking: the best time to bring empty homes back into use was during the years of the property boom - when there was a shortage of properties in many of our towns and cities (like Reading). The recession has just made things slower and more expensive for councils to tackle.
He mentioned an excellent social enterprise charity called Canopy in Leeds who work with homeless people giving them building skills, doing up empty properties and then leasing the property to a local homeless person. I would like to see something like this tried out in Reading. I am aware that there are a couple of charities looking into bringing empty homes back into use locally.
The recession and the housing market crash has had a terrible impact on the problem of empty homes:
It was clear talking to other people at the event that we are only at the beginning of the journey in tackling empty homes in Reading. The first battle was getting the Labour administration to adopt an empty homes strategy, via a Lib Dem motion to Council, then ensuring that resources were put in.
I used our recent scrutiny review into empty homes as an opportnity to ensure that we keep the pressure on Labour in Reading to do something about this issue.
It could take a couple of years for the positive effects of these measures to feed through, but I feel it will be worth it. The pressure on our local housing stock is that great that we need to be thinking innovatively about ways in which we can reuse exisitng housing.
As we speak the empty homes officer is investigating around 90 empty properties in the Borough and if only one of these properties was brought back into use that could provide much needed accomodation for a family or homeless person.
I have met with the officer responsible at RBC and am confident with proper support he will start to have a real impact on reducing the number of long term empty properties across the Borough.
In Redlands we are seeing progress already with 35 Christchurch Road (corner of Kendrick Road) being refurbished as we speak.
You can find more details about where these empty properties are in Reading via this post which I wrote following our scrutiny review into the subject. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to report an empty home in Reading that you would like me to investigate.
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