EHN writes to CLG about value-for-money in £100million programme

EHN has written two letters to CLG about aspects of assessing value-for-money in the £100million empty homes programme, requesting clarifications or adjustments to the methodology. The first letter addressed the question of "revolving funds" (i.e. loan/grant recycling schemes). These were encouraged by the bidding guidance but the value-for-money assessment was said to be carried out on the first property in the scheme. The EHN letter points out that this is contradictory as the value-for-money should be assessed over the full life-tme of the funds ie until there is nothing left to recycle. The second letter (which is restricted in scope to the Community Grants Fund) requests that where grant is given to projects that involve creating HMOs, the unit grant and the quantitty of units produced are assessed based on the number of individual bedrooms/households, not the whole property. The letter uses the example of a 4-bed HMO that is refurbished by young people gaining life and employment skills. On completeion the property is let as an "environmental health" HMO, with 4 independent rooms rather than a traditional shared house. Our letter requests that such a project should be assessed on the basis that it has produced 4 homes for 4 people not 1 home for 4 people.