NAEPP Response to Guardian Special Report on Empty Homes 2010-04-14 - as published

Your special report that uncovered almost half a million long-term empty dwellings in the UK highlighted an issue that everyone is concerned about but few seem to have answers for (Policy that locks homeless out of 450,000 vacant properties, 5 April). This "startling picture of neglect" had to be "pieced together using information gathered from local councils under the Freedom of Information Act," you report, highlighting the underlying reason for this state of affairs – the lack of any meaningful national strategy on empty homes. Indeed, despite the complexities and importance of empty-homes work, there is not a single Whitehall official dedicated to the issue – no champion. But perhaps the real scandal was not picked up by your article. You'd expect a government that cared to insist that its own agencies account for the empty homes. Instead, every year, the government forces the country's 300-plus housing authorities to contact all the public bodies in their area to gather the figures. Central government should take a lead on the empty homes issue. It should set itself targets, as it did with the Rough Sleepers Initiative. It should systematically examine the obstacles to bringing empty houses back into use, and address them. It should support local initiatives, maintain skills, develop delivery vehicles and ensure value for money by helping local authorities share specialist resources. It is currently failing to do any of this. "Refurbishing empty homes cannot deal with the entire housing crisis but it can make an important contribution," David Ireland, chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency, is quoted as saying in your article, adding that the Guardian's research "is yet further evidence of the need for government to revisit a housing policy which is based almost entirely on building new houses". But we mustn't forget that millions of new homes really are needed, and that the potential contribution of empty homes is marginal. Your suggestion that the 450,000 long-term empties is "enough to put a roof over the heads of a quarter of the families on council house waiting lists" may be good arithmetic, but it's complete fantasy as far as the real potential of empty homes goes. Expectations must be realistic. It's not either/or. The government needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. By all means let resources devoted to empty homes be proportionately small – but not disproportionately trivial. As the election approaches, the parties will want to talk up their empty-homes policies. Some are touting short-term spending sprees to buy up empty properties. But this would simply fuel the continuing house-price bubble by adding to demand when supply is limited. Empty homes on the market at the right price will sell: no need to pump in public money to get them occupied. If they're not on the market, what's the point in dishing out hundreds of millions of pounds to buy them? Voters have to look beyond the headline grabbing instant "solutions". The acid test is this: do the proposals include the promise of a long-term national initiative to tackle empty homes in a sustained and co-ordinated way? If not they should be treated as distinctly half-baked."