Empty property officers in the NE London sub region have expressed some concern over clause 10 [now Clause 7 of Special Cases and Interpretation: Admin] of the new draft guidance and would like the NAEPP to consider the following:
This excludes the development of existing residential dwellings, unsuitably constructed commercial property by demolition and rebuild (but development by conversion is ok) and vacant land - each an opportunity to provide much needed new housing in areas of high demand. This work provides much needed new housing so should be recognised. The benefits of doing this type of work could be achieved by allowing 'developed use' (or a similar term?) as a measure of the work involved.
Below is the view of a senior empty property practitioner in the sub-region and his views summarise those of many others.
The fact that the wasted resource changes from a built structure to rubble on the ground doesn't lessen the fact that it is a wasted resource and can have associated environmental problems and antisocial behaviour. I strongly believe that counting the demolition of an empty property as a success where no rebuilding has taken place is a complete travesty of the indicator.
We have numerous cases where with the threat of a CPO we have successfully encouraged the owner of a substandard vacant property to provide high-quality housing through demolition and redevelopment. The housing is often of better quality than that which would have been provided had the building merely been renovated. For this not to be counted and other authorities to count the complete loss of an empty property without replacement is perverse.
It's accepted such measurement should be a matter of scale. New build projects that will happen without the intervention of empty property teams should not count. However, even for larger schemes if an empty property team has a significant in put then that work could be recognised on a proportional basis. We feel the rules we have in the sub region of allowing limited development should be acceptabl, particularly, if we can have a new category of 'developed use'.
Also think redevelopment should be counted
I disagree with para 14 [Note: Now para 7 of Special Cases and Interpretation - Admin], and the statement that new dwellings on the site of demolished buildings should not be counted under the monitoring framework, and that the relationship with empty homes is too remote.
There are a couple of long term empty derelict properties in particular, where we have been encouraging the owners for several years to take some action, and now looks like they are pursuing planning applications for approx 7 units on each site, as they also have land attached to the property. Over the last few years we have been offering a substantial amount of advice and assistance, putting on the pressure, threatening enforcement action etc to get the site owner to get things moving, and will be continuing to do so to ensure that these get progressed. A huge amount of time and effort has been put into cases such as these, and will continue to be, as its overall a long process. We would like to see Empty Homes teams recognised for this work that goes into these types of cases, when the property is finally demolished and redeveloped, by being able to count the number of units built on the site.
In addition, there appears in a number of authorities including ours to be a close link between the empty homes and housing enabling teams, which would reinforce the objection to the view that 'new dwellings built on the site fall outside the monitoring framework, as the relationship with empty dwellings work is too remote'.
Issues with counting new development after demolition
The desire of empty homes practitioners to count all manner of successful outcomes of their work is understandable. But there are quite a few issues with the proposal. It is worth pointing out that the aim of the reporting is to count the success of local authorities in tackling empty homes, not to measure the overall worth of their empty homes teams.
Firstly, just for the record, counting such successes was never envisaged or sanctioned by BVPI64 or the NAEPP Guidelines thereto. There is no wording in the old Guidelines that would accommodate such a thing. I'm aware that authorities were successfuly counting new-build on cleared sites and it was never the job of anyone in NAEPP to police the Guidelines but only to provide comment and feedback when asked to do so. On the one or two occasions when I was asked I advised people that it was not within the Guidelines but that I was aware that some authorities were attempting (and apparently succeeding) in counting them. But that is why the wording was put in the new guidelines - for the avoidance of doubt.It is not actually a change.
Now to the substance. Some of the points that have been made are quite impassioned but don't stand up to close scrutiny. eg. "I strongly believe that counting the demolition of an empty property as a success where no rebuilding has taken place is a complete travesty of the indicator".
With the various kinds of interventions currently counted - re-use, conversion and demolition - ` they all have one thing in common - they are clearly proportionate in scale to an existing buildlng. It has been pointed out before that maybe demolition doesn't belong there at all. And that is a valid point as it does not involve bringing it back into use a dwelling. But it does involve doing something with an empty dwelling and there is a one-for-one relationship between an empty dwelling and the outcome of demolition. One empty dwelling, one demolition counted. With conversion, there is no longer the one-for-one relationship, but it is definitely the re-use of an existing building so clearly related in scale to the nature of the problem. One big empty building = n new dwellings to be counted; one small empty building = a smaller number of units to be counted.
With new-build on a cleared site, this relationship is substantially lost. Not only that but the comon-sense relationship between dealing with empty properties and what you count is lost. If a member of the public asks where the 100 empty homes you reported you dealt with are located and you point to a nice brand-new 10-storey block of flats, I think they will be understandably perplexed and wonder if they are living in the same universe as us. Of course you can explain to them why these new houses have been counted and I am sure they will see some logic in it but a certain amount of credibility will in my view have been lost. You certainly cannot point to it and say it is something you have "done with" an empty dwelling or building.
But lets suppose something along these lines IS agreed by members - then the fun really begins, because we have to establish the criteria involved and decide what is counted. There are so many situations where homes are demolished as part of a regeneration project (I am assuming that only empty homes are being talked about but some of the comments above might imply we are talking about any demolition of any empty building).
What if there is block of commercial properties with say 4 flats above them and these are demolished to make way for a 50-storey skyscraper?
What if the empty homes unlocked a large site of 500 homes?
You will find in many of these larger regeneration projects that homes become empty during the process of site assembly that can begin long before any redevelopment happens. The local authority involvement might be much later eg to CPO a part of a site where the site assembly process has stalled. Criteria about local authority intervention that make sense for mainstream empty homes work such as grant-funding an RSL to do its part of the project start to become meaningless. Perhaps there is an S106 requirement anyway so some grant is very likely to go in willy-nilly. Does that count as local auhority intervention.
It is fine to talk about smaller projects versus bigger projects but experience shows that the criteria set have to be expressed absolutely precisely or the will be abused. So I don't know quite what criteria would allow these disciminations to be made.
It is perhaps worth pointing out, that unlike other empty homes work (other than conversions) the new-build homes that are being talked about will all count towards N154. There is already a statutory indicator for them so why confuse our empty homes reporting with them.
Here are what seems the way forwards from here - after more discussion:
Depending on the discussion that ensues, this might be a suitable case for a vote. The original NAEPP email loop was set up specifically to allow a democratic process around the first BVPI Guidelines so that seems apt!
David Gibbens
Housing Enabling Advisor