David Ireland, Chief Executive of the charity Empty Homes (previously the Empty Homes Agency) has been awarded an O.B.E. in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
David will be well known to all our Members, as a regular speaker at our Annual Conferences and having now served as Chief Executive of Empty Homes for 7 years. Prior to that he worked for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham during which time he played an important role in the development of the Empty Dwelling Management Order legislation, the need for which he promoted in his evidence to the CLG Select Committee that first looked in detail at the empty homes issue.
More recently David was active behind the scenes in arguing for the inclusion of long-term empty homes in the calculation of New Homes Bonus, a measure which has done more than any other to secure the continuation and extension of local authority empty homes initiatives up and down the country, undoubtedly staving off complete annihilation for many, given the extent of the government's austerity programme.
Maintaining the high standard set by a line of illustrious predecessors - the late and great Bob Lawrence, Ashley Horsey and Jonathan Ellis - David's successful lobbying has been done in difficult circumstances, with CLG cutting its grant to the Empty Homes charity under the Labour administration and charitable funds ever harder to access. The OBE shows how influential he has been in getting the empty homes issue across and securing it a central position in the government's housing policy.