When Councils ask us for help BEHBIU* we’re never entirely sure, until we get under the bonnet, what we’re going to be doing. Will it be as straightforward as tracing the absent owner of an empty home to a new address or providing our local authority client with a grant of probate containing the names and contact details of slowcoach executors of a deceased owner? In either case, we’ll be turning the case round in a couple of hours tops, providing the Empty Homes officer with new information so they can engage with the right people with a view to moving the property towards re-occupation. On the other hand plenty of cases come our way where the property has been empty for yonks and is in serious disrepair. Have a look at these pictures – as you can see there’s water damage and preventative measures in the form of some plastic sheeting to fend off the worst of the ingress. You’ve probably seen a lot worse and so have I. However, these pictures are of the neighbouring property, not the empty itself. As you can imagine, the neighbour wasn’t overjoyed with the condition of next door’s property and would definitely have had a go at the owner if she could. However, he had died years previously and no-one had done anything about the probate. The neighbour complained to the Council – the Empty Homes Officer didn’t have the enforcement powers she needed because they sat with her colleagues in Planning and it was hard work persuading Planning to prioritise this case enforcement-wise. In any event, with the owner deceased and with no immediately obvious person to serve notices on, nothing was going to happen overnight. Eventually, this case came across our desk – though the hourglass was running low on sand – and we set about identifying and locating the deceased owner’s next of kin. As it turned out, they were distantly related to the deceased owner, both in terms of their blood relationship to him and also geographically with quite a few relevant people overseas, and none of the family had had any contact with the deceased for decades. As soon as we took instructions from the next of kin, we squeezed the property onto our blanket empty homes insurance policy and took the steps necessary to avoid any further damage to the neighbour’s home and to make it presentable for sale generally.
Have any of your empties been too problematic for too long? Would an informal chat about the options be useful? You’re always welcome to buzz me, anytime, on 07850 739812 or ping me a note at nickbeetham@fraserandfraser.co.uk .
*you know – Bringing Empty Homes Back Into Use
