Blogs

The team at Action on Empty Homes are looking forward to meeting everyone at the Empty Homes Network national conference on 18^th September. We are in the middle of three projects that we will be giving you more information about during the day:

Dear All

Some of you may not be aware of a recent case that related to stamp duty surcharge. 

It may be a way that Empty Property Officers can add value to their clients as well as advising them on the usual reduced vat schemes.

Since 2016, there has been an extra 3% stamp duty tax on properties bought as an additional property to the buyer’s home. Now homebuyers, buy to let investors, and developers buying an additional property might be able to cut out the surcharge if the home is derelict. 

Brighid Carey, Action on Empty Homes writes:

Action on Empty Homes is developing a Community Action Toolkit for local authorities, community groups and other partnerships to use as a resource to help bring empty homes into use as affordable housing for local people. We expect the Toolkit to be available for free download from our website in early 2021. As we start this work, we’d like to gain a snapshot of the extent to which local authorities are currently collaborating with communities to bring empty homes into use.

Life in the Lakes – June/July 2019

Thanks to everyone who contacted me to let me know your council had increased the council tax Premium. It’ll be very interesting to hear after the first six months to a year what effect (if any) the doubling of the Premium has made to your work.

Personally speaking I like the idea that some other councils are already using, which is aimed at those genuinely struggling financially to complete repairs, by offering an option for a ‘holiday’ from the Premium while repairs are completed.

Action on Empty homes has made headlines in the local news and launched a new website

Visit our new website!

Our new website at www.actiononemptyhomes.org is up and running. Have a look and tell us what you think. We aim to emphasise action and partnerships.

Oh dear, I can’t believe the last blog I posted was after last year’s Empty Homes Network conference, where did that time go?!

Our council is currently undergoing a major transformation where all our current roles will no longer exist and we will be invited to apply for generic roles instead. I’m looking at it all a positive way (my usual ‘default’ position) and hoping that I’ll still be able to carry out empty homes work, which I love. I’ve learned so much over the past ten years and am still learning and enjoying new challenges.

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In this edition of Action on Empty Homes news, we have some key diary dates for the week beginning 29th April with a new publication launch, an international seminar and upcoming local elections, all raising the profile of the empty homes issue in England.

As always, we welcome your feedback on all stories in this newsletter

In this edition, we report on our upcoming event ‘Community Action on Empty Homes’ in York, a policy proposal to tackle empty homes in London, and news from Amsterdam about ‘buy to let’.

We welcome your feedback on all stories in this newsletter.

Join us in York on May 2nd for our Community Action on Empty Homes event and report launch. You can find details here 

Community action on empty homes

Using empty homes to regenerate communities

Thursday 2nd May 2019: York

Action on Empty Homes is holding a free event for all those interested in taking action on empty homes.

At this event we will launch the final report from our 3-year study of community- based approaches to bringing empty homes into use

Brighid Carey 

Project Manager from Action on Empty Homes 

Chris Bailey, Action on Empty Homes campaign manager writes:

Nationally we now have over 216,000 long-term empty homes in England at a time of national housing crisis and the numbers of empties are rising at the fastest rate in a decade.