Cash incentive to refurbish empty homes

It will examine how to encourage housing associations to purchase and repair empty homes. It will investigate how to motivate the voluntary sector and not-for-profit groups to tackle the problem.

The moves are understood to be outlined in a government consultation on how it plans to deal with empty homes, expected to be announced this week. It follows Inside Housing’s long-running Empty Promise campaign to reduce the number of unoccupied homes in the UK.

There are currently an estimated 870,000 empty homes in the UK, according to charity Empty Homes.

Sources connected to the plans said the paper will ask whether local authorities need new powers to tackle owners who leave their homes unoccupied. These would be in addition to the existing empty dwelling management orders.

The paper will accept that there are currently too few incentives for housing associations to get involved.

Abigail Davies, head of policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: ‘There’s a wide range of tools they [landlords] can use but availability of resources tend to constrain which of these are used regularly.

‘It’s worth doing the consultation because it is a challenge but it’s largely a resource issue, and it needs to be dealt with strategically not just reactively.’