With George Clark's Ten Point Plan for Regeneration featuring in the government's £91million funding announcement at the end of June, it seems apt for EHN to launch its own Good Practice Standards.
These standards have led a shadowy existence previously in appendices to other documents. They were previously known as Minimum Standards but Plymouth City Council, who have endorsed the standards, wanted to project a more positive message, a welcome piece of input from a progressive authority.
It is clear that making empty homes work a statutory duty of local authorities is not likely to find favour in the foreseeable future in the context of localism, the Red Tape Challenge and practical issues around defining the duty in a way that could be made to stick rather than being subverted via some box-ticking exercise.
Our Standards take a more gentle but also constructive approach, highlighting the practical measures we think local authorities should be pursuing if they are taking empty homes issues seriously. We hope this will support practitioners inside authorities. It may also be useful to elected Members or members of the public to help then assess whether enough is being done in their areas.
We have kept the document short and sweet, without illustrative Case Studies. We'd probably like to build up a library of Case Studies on-line. You can download it from here.