Blogs

Life in the Lakes – Homesmatch reaches the parts other empty homes officers can’t always reach!

April 2016

I’ve just come into work – it’s Wednesday morning - and the first email I read was from Charlie Stewart at Homesmatch. A week or so ago, I passed on details for Homesmatch to an owner who is tearing his hair out about his empty property. It’s not for sale yet because there are some other issues which need to be sorted out first. I hadn’t been able to do much for the owner which was very frustrating.

March 2016

How many times have you suggested to owners of empty homes, “why don’t you sell it?” with the reply “I don’t want to sell it till I’ve done it up – but I don’t have the money to do that”! And so the property remains empty…..

Well I’ve discovered a possible new solution (new to me, anyway!) Recently, I met Charlie Stewart from Homesmatch and it sounds like they could be offering a new choice for those owners.

February 2016

We’re already into the second month of a new year and I’ve got my enthusiasm back again, hooray! And my broken elbow (or Spanish Archer, as Matthew Smith described it!) is finally getting better.

Life in the Lakes - Working from home

Well it’s been an interesting couple of months for me since I fell and broke my elbow at the start of August! The first astonishing thing was that I didn’t even realise I’d actually broken anything, as I wasn’t in absolute agony. However that did kick in after the operation… Cue two weeks in a heavy rigid plastercast feeling a bit like the leaning tower of Pisa when I walked. Then lots more pain when the cast came off and the stitches were removed. But I was lucky to be able to work from home from 1^st September.

Life in the Lakes - April 2015

I was thinking about what I could write in this month’s blog, and then I remembered I’d had an unusual one recently which finally came to a successful conclusion, in a very round-a-bout way. Sort of ‘thinking outside the box’ solution…

Life in the Lakes

March 2015

I am currently feeling very happy with the end result of our first empty homes grant, part of our new empty homes grant management scheme. Or as they say in this neck of the woods ‘job’s a good ‘un’!! There’s now a very contented family living in what looks like a new home – mum, dad, 3 kids and dog! Result!

We persevered with the prototype legal agreements needed for this scheme, which took a long time to complete. Now it all feels worthwhile.

Life in the Lakes

January 2015

I was amazed to see I wrote my last blog as long ago as January 2014, so I thought I’d bring you up to date with what’s been going on in my ‘empty homes’ life. Apologies for the long ‘silence’!

This is a blog post from the Leeds Empties site - but hopefully of interest to EHN members.

Most of us will have an idea of what we expect an “empty home” to look like. It’ll probably be boarded up. It might have rubbish in the front garden. There may be grass growing in the guttering. In short, it’ll look a right mess, and will be having a negative impact on the neighbourhood.

I’ve been trying to get a moment to write up my first Blog of 2014, and now that time has come.

I feel this is going to be another year, nationally, to further highlight the issues of empty homes through the media even more. In many ways, this helps confirm that we are doing a good job for our communities, and helps ‘educate’ people that the equation is not as simple as ‘but if we have 1,000 homes standing empty, why can’t that help to house 1,000 off the ‘waiting’ list?’ If only life were that simple…

July/August 2013

Oh dear, three months have passed since I posted my last blog, I’ve been balancing lots of different plates in the air… But it’s all good stuff.