At last Thursday's Empty Homes Summit, organised by the Empty Homes Network, representatives from the Homes and Communities Agency and the Department of Communities and Local Government stressed the need for organisations with allocations under Rounds 1 and 2 of the government's Empty Homes Programmes to be confident of delivery or hand allocations back so the funding could be re-deployed elsewhere.
Re-allocation within Empty Homes pot
Sarah Streater and Helen Williams of the HCA, both Area Managers with operational responsiblities for delivery, described how the aim throughout was to keep money within the Empty Homes Programme if at all possible. Where money was returned, the first port of call was other empty homes projects within the same area; if there were no takers, money would be returned to the national pot but with the intention of funding empty homes projects elsewhere in the country.
Despite difficulties in some areas, there were also successful projects that had already spent their allocations and were able to deliver more if funding was available. There was a strong will within the HCA to delivery the government's policy priorities of tackling empty homes.
Reputational damage can be avoided
A point that was emphasised was that, provided organisations unable to deliver handed back their allocations promptly, they could escape damage to their reputations. It was recognised that tackling empty homes - particularly the worse cases that the programme had been designed to address - required long lead times that the programme could not easily accommodate. However, where organisations hung onto the money more in hope than expectation and either failed to deliver or handed the funding back too late for it to be re-allocated, then certainly this could affect reputations with implications for
No extensions
It was also emphasised that there had been no hint of any extension to the March 2015 deadline. Any such extension would need to be sanctioned by the Treasury. For Community Grants Programme projects there was an informal deadline of the end of October 2014 for providers to have secured certainty for their schemes (i.e. lease signed) on the expectation that anything later than that woudl be unlikely to deliver before the end-of-programme deadline.
"Continuous Market Engagement"
One option available to providers under the HCA programme is to re-bid for money under the Continuous Market Engagement process for the 2015-18 Affordable Homes Programme. The CME opportunity should be available soon now that the first allocations for the 2015-18 have been announced. It is difficult to know how likely such CME bids would be to succeed if the political backing for a separate Empty Homes programme is lacking. Moreover, this would apparently involve new contracts.
Empty Homes Network representations
The Empty Homes Network expects to make representations to the government to allow, as a minimum, a de facto extension of the HCA programme by passporting 2012-15 projects through to the 2015-18 programme, thus securing a better set of outcomes for the Empty Homes Programme. The Tribal-administered CGP programme is more problematic because Tribal's own contract terminates ; but surely like any contract it can be extended? or transferred to HCA, given that the paperwork is relatively simple?