In a letter to the Empty Homes Network, Stephen Williams, the Minister for Empty Homes has turned down our plea for an extension of the current Empty Homes Programme beyond 31st March 2015 (reported here), whilst acknowledging the contribution of local authority empty homes officers in bringing down the total number of empties.
The letter to us reads as follows:
Thank you for your letters of 28 July to Brandon Lewis MP and I about the empty homes programme.
The Government has placed a high commitment to bring back empty homes into use and empty homes in England are now at their lowest level at just over 635,000 which is down by around a fifth since 2009 and their lowest level since 2004. There has also been a dramatic drop in the numbers of long-term vacant properties, which fell by around a third over the past 4 years, from 316,251 in 2009 to 216,050 in 2013. This is partly due to the hard work carried out by local authority empty homes officers in identifying and persuading owners to bring properties back into use.
I can confirm that the Empty Homes Programmes will close on 31 March 2015 and registered providers and community groups are required to complete delivery by that date to claim funding. There are no plans to extend the delivery deadline which was clearly set out in the bidding guidance and funding agreements with providers.
However, bids for empty homes schemes are eligible to apply for 2015-18 Affordable Homes Programme funding. In a change from the previous programme, all the funding has not been allocated at the outset and the remainder will be available for future bids in due course. You mention the 75% starts on site grant payments for affordable housing. I would like to clarify this only applies to early starts on site between 1 July 2014 and 31 March 2015.
As regards the last point, about bidding for funding for the new programme, we are aware of one successful bid so far (Rossendale's bid for revolving loan funding which we believe is cross-authority); but we are also aware of another bid which was directly modelled on successful delivery under the current programme which failed. This suggests that the value-for-money criteria will be tightly applied.