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Empty Homes Practitioner of the Year 2017 - results

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June 8, 2017
This is our longest-running awards category and it always attracts high quality submissions, making the choice of winners difficult. This year, the award was sponsored and judged by Kent’s No Use Empty team, who certainly are well-equipped with all the necessary experience needed to evaluate the entries. In the event, they selected one outright winner, and also gave a ‘highly commended’ award. The awards were presented at the Empty Homes Conference in Bimringham by Steve Grimshaw, Programme Manager, Kent County Council. Winner – Thelma Cunningham, Plymouth City Council The submission on behalf of Thelma read: Thelma is an inspiring and passionate Housing Delivery Officer, leading the empty homes initiative for Plymouth City Council.  She is integral to the success of the Council's empty homes work and the acclaim it receives. Thelma's passion and determination for empty homes work has ensured the prominence of empty homes within the Council's political agenda; a competitive environment in which to maintain a profile.  She successfully engages and enthuses senior colleagues and political members in the empty homes agenda and most recently this has led to a £1 million capital budget being agreed to help tackle empty homes in the City.  Thelma has sought to allocate part of this budget as financial assistance for empty home owners and has created an innovative “Empty Homes Financial Assistance Policy."   This provides a range of part loan, part grant offers tailored to the needs of empty home owners in the City.  To date the Council has approved two financial assistance applications, which will see two properties that have been empty for 21 and 8 years respectively brought back into use.  Integral to securing support for the empty homes agenda is the ability to promote and communicate the wider benefits of the empty homes works.  Thelma has done this effectively in the context of the New Homes Bonus and now leads the annual "empty homes blitz." This is an exercise aimed at maximising the New Homes Bonus received by the Council (by ensuring the number of empty properties recorded as long term empty for the NHB return are as low and accurate as possible), while also raising awareness through contacting every long term empty property owner in the City.  Over the last 3 years Thelma has co-ordinated a team that visited 3,303 properties registered as empty for council tax purposes.  As a consequence of this direct action co-ordinated by Thelma, the team has been able to remove 1,613 from the Council tax empty homes list, generating circa £8.16m of New Homes Bonus. While much of Thelma's efforts are spent working on the strategic approach to empty homes work, she is very active on the “ground” working to bring long term empty properties back in to use.  Thelma works on a diversity of projects demonstrating her vast knowledge, experience and varied skill set. For example, Thelma led a pioneering partnership between the HCA and a Registered Provider to convert a redundant commercial building into 30 affordable flats.  This secured £3.5 million worth of investment into the City and provided much needed affordable housing.  She has also negotiated the voluntary sale of a problem, derelict grade II listed snooker club that had been empty for over 10 years.  Thelma is now actively engaged with the new owner and supporting the planning pre application that seeks to redevelop it for mixed use, including the provision of new housing. Thelma's determination is a credit to her.  She has powerful skills of negotiation meaning that she often succeeds where others have failed.  This is illustrated by her recent persuasion of an owner of a property that had been empty for 16 years to use the Council's "Empty Homes Sales Service." (An award winning scheme that Thelma, helped to launch as part of a robust toolkit of empty homes incentives).   The property has now been bought by a local construction company and the renovation works are set to start immediately.  Thelma is always willing to go the extra mile for owners who engage and this is demonstrated in a recent example where a property had been empty for 20 years.  Thelma was able to engage with the owner, who had severe mental health issues, to build a strong rapour and gain the owners trust.  Thelma successfully negotiated the sale of the property through auction, and even packed the empty house up on the owner’s behalf.  Thelma is always keen to consider how empty homes can help wider housing need and in this instance she is now working with the new owner and other Council departments to adapt the property and match the renovated house to a family in need of this type of specialist accommodation at an affordable rent.  This again demonstrates Thelma’s ability to create new partnership and engage others in her vision for empty homes. Thelma does however operate a no nonsense approach to those empty home owners who do not engage and has an excellent record for enforcement action.  For example, she has recently completed a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) and is now working with the new owner on plans to provide two new homes on the site. This month she has started CPO proceeding against two other problem long term empty properties in the City. Thelma also oversees all empty properties subject to enforced sale, and the most recent success was sold at auction and is now being renovated for occupation. This action recovered £8,559 of debts owed to the Council.  Thelma is always seeking opportunities to strengthen the Council's empty homes enforcement powers and has recently sought to promote Empty Dwelling Management Order (EDMO) for wider use within the Council.  Subsequently, she arranged a training day and within weeks the Council has started its first EDMO.  This demonstrates Thelma's unfaultable can do attitude. To conclude, Thelma is an experienced and knowledgeable empty home practitioner, with a proven track record who continues to seek innovation and pioneer new ideas. She is well liked and respected by colleagues and members of the public she interacts with.  In Plymouth we believe an empty house is a wasted home, and Thelma’s achievements to date not only set a high standard, but inspire other practitioners.   For these reasons we believe that she should be considered as the Empty Homes Practitioner of the year. Highly Commended: Claire Storey, Durham County Council The submission on behalf of Claire read as follows: Claire Storey has worked in Durham County Council’s Private Sector Initiatives team since November 2011. The team moved to the Housing Solutions service in April 2014 she took the lead officer role for bringing private sector empty homes back into use. Claire drives the empty homes programmes providing advice and encouragement to her colleagues to ensure annual targets are delivered. Claire’s determination, enthusiasm and exemplar negotiation and persuasion skills, known among her colleagues as ‘pester power’ has successfully brought a number of empty properties back into use. An example of this is Claire’s relentless involvement, over a period of six years with a long-term empty property, where there was no registered owner details. It turned out to be a deceased estate. Claire’s tenacity ended with her working with tracing agents and Bona Vacantia to get to the stage of the property sold on the open market and brought back into use. Over a period of time Claire has built up excellent relationships with a number of internal services establishing a good networking system. Regular meetings take place to discuss problematic empty properties with Council Tax, Planning, Building Control and Environmental Health. Using Council Tax data Claire has developed a database, which identifies both long and short-term empty properties across the county, which she monitors and updates on a regular basis. This provides the basis of the proactive work the team carries out. Claire is a front line officer in the operational team however, she thinks strategically across the authority when it comes to the empty homes agenda and has been integral to implementing processes to tie together empty homes loans with accredited landlords and advertising properties on the councils Durham Key Options choice based lettings system. She uses a whole systems approach to developing the team and dealing issues such as open to access, fly tipping and overgrown gardens. Working within the housing solutions arena Claire has forged good working processes with the Homeless and Prevention Officers and has been instrumental in helping them understand the reasons for working together to secure accommodation for people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness as empty homes are renovated and returned back into use. The team performance indicators for empty home are monitored by Claire and for the last three years the 120 per year target has been exceeded as follows : Year Target Achieved Outcome 2014/2015 120 161 +41 2015/2016 120 158 +38 2016/2017 120 136 +17
Communication and partnership working Claire continues to build upon the communication network she has set up with both internal and external partners, an example of this recently, while Claire was collating the monthly empty homes report from council tax records, she noticed an increase in the number of empty properties recorded for one of the Registered Providers.  Claire contacted the RP regarding the increase in voids and arranged to meet with them to discuss how they could work together and bring the empty properties back into use in a more managed way through utilising the private sector initiatives officers advice and support along with financial assistance in the form of move in grants and loans to encourage more owner occupation in the area rather than the properties being disposed of into the private rented market.. Having access to Council Tax records enables Claire to monitor the number of long and short term empty properties across the county, and enable her contact the owners of the empty properties.  The access to the data enabled the team and Claire to look at different ways to approach dealing with empty properties, working with other services and departments taking a more holistic approach and targeting a specific area where there was multiply concerns and issues raised. Working with colleagues in Revenues and Benefits, Claire established there was duplication on work being carried out within the empty homes agenda and set in place regular meetings to discuss the more complex cases. Working jointly with the Revenue and Benefits service has resulted in a substantial amount of debt being recovered. Developed the empty homes loan and grant programme offer After receiving funding through the empty homes cluster programme the business model had to be amended and Claire was instrumental in developing a scheme of financial assistance to property owners including private landlords. The financial products include interest free loans to landlords; move in incentive grants to purchasers of long term empty properties who purchase to live in themselves; and loans for renovating once they have purchased. All landlords must be accredited to qualify for financial assistance and more recently the homeless and prevention officers utilise only accredited landlords to provide accommodation to their clients. This ensures quality accommodation is provided as it has been through an inspection from the council. To promote the financial assistance available when purchasing long-term empty properties, Claire developed promotional literature, which was sent to all estate agents in the county advertising the offers available to their clients. Investors list Claire along with her colleagues have developed a comprehensive Investors List, which identified investors who are interested in increasing their portfolio, the type of property and value of the properties they are interested in purchasing along with the area they want to purchase.  The list is regularly updated; and sent out to home owners who wish to sell their empty properties. Monitoring systems Claire has developed a comprehensive monitoring and reporting system, which enables her to provided information on the number of empty properties across the county, and individual areas, the number of loans carried out and those currently being processed, as well as financial information. Advice and Support Claire provides advice, assistance and support to owners of empty properties, ensuring the most appropriate and cost effective course of action for both the owner and the council.  Providing a holistic approach to dealing with empty properties. Problematic and complex cases Claire has extensive skills and knowledge in  empty homes work, and works tirelessly to trace owners and bring properties back into use to make a difference to the communities she works within. Often cases of long-term empties are not registered on land registry so Claire will go the extra mile in checking death records, liaising with other local authorities to trace any known relatives and on occasions engaging specialist companies to help trace ownership. Innovative ways of working Claire is constantly looking at new way of working to bring empty properties back into use, working closely with colleagues; she has developed an empty homes matrix, which helps to prioritise caseloads and highlight actions needed to deal with properties.  All empty properties reported to the team have a matrix completed of the external of the building. Claire introduced a new approach to multi agency work with empty properties, engaging partner agencies in a ‘Team Around the Property’ approach. Thus ensuring all necessary services attended meeting to discuss the most appropriate way to deal with complaint about empty properties and an action plan developed and the most appropriate service is responsible for monitoring and ensuring the necessary actions are carried out. Working with colleagues, Claire has developed a robust action plan, to ensure empty homes work is coordinated and effective. Empty Homes Practitioner of theYear Award 2017
Sponsored by Kent No Use Empty