Running on empty

I was interested to read about the “new” proposal to create an empty homes hit squad (24 September, page 8).

Surely we have been here before with the Empty Homes Agency? The agency was extremely good at publicising the blight of empty properties across the country in public, Ministry of Defence and private hands.

This was all joined up with local authority empty property strategies and empty homes officers, who in turn could link up owners with housing associations to access grants from central government.

So what’s new here?

It is interesting that this endeavour seeks to get councils to exercise their compulsory purchase powers to release properties. That’s exactly the point where all attempts at a statutory slant fell down before.

Unless I have missed some new legislation that makes the mechanism easier and provides extra funding to complete these intended compulsory purchases, I cannot see that this endeavour will fare any better than the previous attempts at empty property “joined-up thinking”.