Empty Homes Network

With the Empty Homes Network Virtual Conference fast approaching, there is till time to send us your submissions for the Empty Homes Awards 2021, with the deadline now extended to the 14th May. To highlight the work, and celebrate the achievements of empty homes practitioners across the country over the past 12 months, there are six award categories covering a wide range of activities, partnerships and individual successes. We welcome submissions and nominations for all categories, and strongly encourage those practitioners who work alone to nominate themselves to highlight their personal achievements during such a challenging and difficult year. The awards and their winners will be showcased during this year’s EHN Virtual Conference on the 27th May, with bookings now open and a full line-up of speakers announced on our dedicated page here. Award Categories and Sponsors The Innovation Award sponsored by Bevan Brittan Empty property practitioners excel at providing a range of solutions to the problem of wasted homes. This award aims to highlight the innovative thinking required to deal with the difficult long-term empties in a way that provides new solutions to old problems. This award can cover individual interventions or entire schemes. We're looking for creative and original approaches, systems, interventions that have demonstrated their value in helping bring empty homes back into use. Meeting the Challenge Award sponsored by Carson Millican of Empty Property Solutions Ltd Whilst excelling at providing a range of solutions to the problem of wasted homes, undoubtedly some cases are more challenging than others and require the right combination of perseverance, imagination and appropriate tools to be brought into play. This award is intended to highlight particularly difficult cases that have been successfully dealt with. Let us know the challenges you faced and how you met them. Empty Homes Practitioner of the Year Award sponsored by No Use Empty: Kent Recognising an individual’s outstanding achievements over the past 12 months, we'd like to know why the nominated person deserves the award and are interested in any of the following: Innovation - Dedication - Organisation ...and/or any other quality or achievement that you think deserves recognition. We recognise that Empty Homes Practitioners often work alone or, so we strongly encourage all practitioners to nominate themselves if they feel their achievements during such a difficult year are worthy of national recognition. The Partnership Award sponsored by Grafton Empty Homes This award seeks to recognise the importance of partnership working, between two independent agencies or organisations where the relationship has made a fundamental contribution to bringing empties back into use. Whether a particularly challenging case has been solved by bringing together external partners, or a combination of internal departments, we want to hear how your collaboration worked to achieve success. The Best 'Before-and-After' Photos Award sponsored by Auction House & UK Property Rescue A picture speaks a thousand words, and nothing is more powerful in underlining the value of the work that empty homes practitioners do than before-and-after pictures. And the good news… with this award you don't have to write anything! In judging the submissions, we will primarily be interested in the quality not the quantity of the pictures. In that vein, please limit your submissions to a maximum of four properties, with no more than six pictures of each, but don't in any way treat this as a target! The Rising Star Award sponsored by Fraser & Fraser In this award, we look to recognise newcomers who display the same qualities that we seek when giving the 'Empty Homes Practitioner of the Year' Award’, as described above. (Accordingly' we will automatically enter ‘Rising Star’ submissions for the 'Practitioner of the Year' Award incase a newcomer is so brilliant that they outshine the older hands.) Critera are as for the 'EHP of the Year' Award except that we are restricting eligibility to local authority employees (or employees of companies to which a local authority has outsourced its empty homes work) because we think roles needs to be broadly comparable across submissions. How to Submit your Nominations The following applies to all awards, except where indicated otherwise in the description of the individual award.

Submissions should be clear and to the point and a maximum 1200 words per award on no more than 2 A4 pages.
You can send us more if you want e.g. pictures, sample forms, process diagrams etc - but in evaluating your submission we will only look at the first 1200 words of the first two pages (which should therefore be self-contained).
The deadline for submissions is Friday 14th May, 2021
Please send your submissions to events@ehnetwork.org.uk

Submissions are accepted on the understanding that you are giving EHN licence to reproduce them in whole or in part, edited as appropriate for an audience of empty homes practitioners (for example, in news stories or in our Practice library). We're very much looking forward to receiving your submissions, and celebrating the good work that practitioners are doing up and down the country, especially over such a difficult and challenging past 12 months. Best wishes and good luck! Adam