Parliamentary exchange on empty homes

There's been an exchange in Parliament about empty homes, with Andrew Stunell putting forwards the Government perspective. The brief debate can be found here. The minister specifically mentions EDMOs as a tool that local authorities can use. He mentions "tripling" the investment in empty homes, which presumably refers to the £100M. We are not sure how the tripling is calculated as there is no way of disaggregating from HCA figures the amounts specifically spent on empty omes. But we guess this in relation to Temporary Social Housing Grant only. When asked whether the government had a quantitative target to reduce the number of long-term empty homes (eg by 100,000 or 200,000) the Minister re-iterated the frequently-cited figure of 3,000 funded by the £100M for empty homes whilst mentiopning the New Homes Bonus as another source of funding.