Early Day Motion on Empty Homes - November 2009
November 9, 2009
This Early Day Motion proposd by Grant Shapps (Conservative shadow Minister for Housing) calls for the scrapping of EDMOs among other things and suggests that the main problem with empty homes lies in the public rather than the private sector. David Ireland of the Empty Homes Agency has been in contact with the Conservative Party and reports as follows:
I have just had a meeting with Grant Shapps head of staff. You may be relieved to hear that despite the wording in their early day motion, scrapping EDMOs is not Conservative policy. The EDM has so far been signed by 24 Conservative 1 DUP and 1 Labour member. An interesting statistic is 15 councils have used EDMOs, 13 of them Conservative controlled.
I've made my feelings known on this and, and we will resist attempts to scrap EDMOs. If any of you have friendly Conservative council members it would be great they could let Grant Shapps know that EDMOs are a useful tool, and it would be wrong to scrap them, particularly if there is nothing proposed to replace them.
I think it also worth pointing out that having the shadow housing minister interested in the issue and proposing this EDM is in itself a good thing. Even if the wording isn't quite what we wanted.
