Agenda item

(Director of Housing) To consider the attached report.

The Panel received a report from the Private Housing Manager – Technical, regarding progress on the work by the Technical Officer dealing with Empty Properties and Park Home Sites within the Private Sector Housing (Technical) Team.

In November 2009, the Cabinet agreed to the addition of a part time, temporary post in the Private Sector Housing (Technical) Team assisting with bringing empty properties back in to use and helping with the licensing of the District’s park home sites. In September 2011, the Cabinet agreed to the existing post being made full time and permanent. The former post holder had resigned in August 2011 and the new full time permanent post was filled during February 2012.

Empty Properties

A systematic procedure had been established for dealing with empty properties in the private sector, beginning with tracing and communicating with property owners or other interested parties establishing why a property was empty. Following this the Technical Officer’s role was to determine how best the owner could be assisted in bringing the property back into use. The Council could offer financial incentives for bringing properties up to the Decent Homes Standard and providing affordable accommodation for tenants or owner occupiers. The PLACE (Private Lease Agreements Converting Empties) Scheme was one form of financial assistance; the scheme ran at no cost to the Council other than the administration process by the Technical Officer. It currently offered high level grants of up to £50,000 to an owner in return for leasing the property for 3 years to the Consortium’s preferred partner, Genesis, during which time the owner received no rental income.

In June 2011 the previous Portfolio Holder for Housing agreed to the PLACE Scheme being extended to offer smaller grants and loans to owners of empty properties. The grant allowed an owner to take out a smaller grant for renovating their home and lease for an agreed period, dependent on the grant size, but to also receive some rent themselves. The PLACE Small Grant was available to owners; the first three applications were being considered. In the near future, interest free loans would be available; once approved they would be up to a maximum of £25,000 per unit on either a “loan-to-sell” or “loan-to-let” agreement. The loans would be repayable and recycled back in to the PLACE scheme funds.

The Council attached conditions requiring all grants to be repaid when the recipient sold the property. The Empty Homes Repayable Assistance was effectively an interest free loan up to £10,000, repayable on the sale of the property and available to owners wanting to live in the property themselves. The loan had been available from July 2012 and officers were currently processing one application with several other owners showing interest.

In some cases, where a problematic empty property existed and the owner was either absent or un-cooperative in bringing their property back to use, it was necessary to consider enforcement action. This could be through Enforced Sale, Compulsory Purchase (CPO) or making an Empty Dwelling Management Order (EDMO). Officers followed the Private Sector Housing Enforcement Policy in such cases, seeking Member approval where appropriate.

The new Technical Officer spent approximately 18 hours a week dealing with empty properties, for which there was a target in the Private Sector Business Plan 2011-13 of bringing 30 empty dwellings per annum back into use. In 2011/12, 60 empty properties were brought back into use.

The New Homes Bonus (NHB), introduced by the Government in April 2011, created an effective financial incentive to encourage local authorities in facilitating housing growth. As well as applying to new homes built, the NHB also applied to long term empty properties brought back into use. The Bonus was calculated by comparing the number of dwellings for which Council Tax was collected in a local authority area from October to October and rewarding any net increase. The number of long term empty properties was deducted from the total number of dwellings on the Council Tax list. This “netting off” of long term empty properties meant that any reductions in the number had the same effect as building new homes and, any increases in the number of long term empty properties had the same effect as a reduction in new homes.

While the bringing back into use of a total of 28 properties could be directly attributed to the work of the Technical Officer in the first two quarters of 2012/13, a further 178 properties had been taken off the Empty Property List following an initial standard letter, or follow up letter, which also counted towards the NHB.

Licensing of Park Home Sites

Local authorities had a statutory requirement to issue licences on all their park homes sites and decide what conditions to attach. In 2008, the Government produced new standards for permanent residential park homes sites, providing a framework upon which councils could base the conditions they attach when re-licensing sites.

The existing site licence conditions for park home sites in the Epping Forest District had not been reviewed for many years. New proposed standard park home site licence conditions for permanent residential sites were produced to ensure conditions were relevant, consistent and would adequately protect the health and safety of people residing at, or visiting, sites within the District. These were agreed by the Cabinet in April 2011 following a second consultation exercise with residents and site owners.

However, during the course of officer inspections, certain anomalies came to light which, not being specifically covered in the conditions, officers felt that a determination from Members on the interpretation to be adopted was required. It was agreed that site owners and park home residents should be consulted on these further matters and that their views should be considered further by the Housing Scrutiny Standing Panel. A meeting also took place in January 2012 between the former Leader, the former Housing Portfolio Holder, and representatives of Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECF & RS) at which they expressed their views. The Cabinet agreed on 23 July 2012 that revised Standard Park Home Site Licence Conditions for Permanent Residential Sites be adopted which included clarifications and variations relating to smoke detection in porches; decking and porches being structures; fence height and definition of a hedge.

Following the Cabinet decision, the Technical Officer had written to all site owners and Residents Associations informing them of the outcome. The site owners had been provided with a summary sheet of existing contraventions that would be tolerated by virtue of the fact that they would have existed prior to the issuing of the new site licence. The Technical Officer would use this as a basis for determining compliance with the site licence conditions.

It was anticipated that new site licences, with standard site licence conditions, would be issued to all site owners by November 2012. It would then be necessary to monitor them to ensure compliance with the site licence conditions and deal with any matters from residents or site owners relating to the licence or management of the site. This would continue to require two days a week of an officer’s time on an ongoing basis.

RESOLVED:

That the report regarding the work carried out by the Technical Officer post in the Private Sector Housing (Technical) Team, dealing with empty properties and park home sites, be noted.