The government's £50million programme for Clusters of Empties has now been launched with a very tight deadline for Expressions of Interest of 12pm (which we take to be noon) on Monday 12th March.
The Homes and Communities Agency is managing the bidding process and
its website lays out the key criteria as follows:
The programme is open to Local Authorities and HCA Investment Partners who can demonstrate that proposed schemes meet the following criteria:
- A minimum of 100 homes brought back into use
- Delivery is within a distinct, compact area (ward or smaller) with over 10% of homes empty, and each cluster representing more than 25 empty homes
- Clear and demonstrable high level strategic fit and community support - as well as evidence of local authority commitment if the local authority is not the lead bidder
- In principle commitment to providing 100% match funding
More detailed applications will be invited by the end of April 2012.
It's difficult to assess the realism of the criteria, which are certainly demanding. For a large RSL operating across a number of authorities, 100 empties brought back into use within 3 years is a different challenge from one local auhority trying to do the same in its own area though no doubt large metropolitan councils might achieve this.
The criteria do not require the homes to be in private ownership. So this funding pot could be used to fund homesteading of schemes prevoiusly acquired as part of Housing Market Renewal programmes. We have established however that the programme cannot be used for surplus RSL or Council HRA homes (see comment from Thelma Cunningham). There is no requirement for the homes to be affordable. Taking £10,000 per property as an arbitrary benchmark, a local authority would need to bid for £1,000,000 to reach the 100 homes target and provide £1,000,000 in match funding. There is no mention of revolving funds or loans at this stage though more detail might be forthcoming when the detailed scheme was worked up. For example, it is not clear whethre might be possible to stretch the 100 homes out over a period lasting beyond the end of the current funding round by re-investmenht of funds.
