Here is the text of Don Foster's speech to the Empty Homes Conference on Monday 26th in London (as drafted, not delivered).
In 1990, Rachel Whiteread won international recognition for her cast of an empty room.
It was a striking piece. Conveying the sadness, the sheer tragedy of an unoccupied place - a place with no one to call it home.
Significantly, the artist’s name for that work was ‘Ghost’ and that really is the point. Homes are not pieces of sculpture. They are made to be occupied. An empty home is a phantom. A hole in the heart of...
The government has published its response to the consultation on what should happen to empty homes premium receipts.
They have...
On the day that the government's statutory instrument to make it harder for local authorities to obtain Empty Dwelling Management...
The familiar Communiites and Local Government website has now been replaced by the developing single portal for government, GOV.UK. DCLG...
BBC breakfast time on the 14th November featured a Fresh Horizons scheme in Huddersfield, funded out of the government's £100million empty homes pot. The scheme aims to bring 65 homes back into use.
The video is accessible from here.
You can find out more about Fresh Horizons (a Huddersfield-based social enterprise) here.
The Empty Homes Network has recently sent out a Freedome of Information Request to English housing authorities. This is the...
In an exclusive front page story, Inside Housing magazine reports that the government has admitted that the allocation of HMR...
A letter written to local authorities at the end of July apparently indicates the government's intention to offer councils complete...
Justice Kenneth Parker has dismissed an appeal against a CPO where the appellant tried to claim that, because the dwelling...
The long awaited changes to the Empty Dwelling Management Order regime are now moving forward as the relevant Statutory Instrument...
We have submitted our consultation response regarding how Empty Homes Premium should be taken account of in the Council Tax Base figures.
Although our worst fears about EHP affecting New Homes Bonus seem not to have been justified (according to advice received from finance experts at LGA) we have nevertheless questioned the allocation of the revenue received, arguing that it should be distributed by giving priority to housing authorities and police and fire authorities. The technicalities of how this might best be done with regard to CTB calculations is, regrettably, not clear to us however.
Our final consultation response can...
We've put our draft consultation response on the exceptions to the Empty Homes Premium on the website here for download....
The first draft of our consultation response on the Empty Homes Premium has now been published (follow this link for...
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September 28, 2012
CLG has for the first time published figures showing the contribution made by reductions in the number of empty homes...