A look back at Leeds Empties Week - plus our first impact report

Our second Leeds Empties Week took place from 17th to 21st of March 2014. The focus this year was on encouraging owners to get in touch - and we concentrated on the cost of keeping a home empty - estimating that a typical empty home owner in Leeds was losing out by around £650 a month. We got good local media coverage, and we organised a visit by Communities Minister Stephen Williams to a couple of empty homes that are being renovated by LATCH. You can read a round-up of Leeds Empties Week here. We also published a report into the impact of the Empty Homes Doctor in the first twelve months - you can read that here. Overall we were pleased with how the Week went. However, encouraging owners to get in touch is still a struggle (we attract enough to keep us busy, but we want to reach more) - and we'd welcome people's thoughts on any successful ways to encourage owners to get in touch. In particular, if people have found ways to increase response rates from council empty homes team letters to owners, it'd be great to hear more. We recently secured a second year's contract with Leeds City Council - and we're looking forward to talking more about how we're getting on at the conference in May.