A new decision by the Information Tribunal re-inforces the Bexley decision that lists of empty homes owned by "non-individuals" should be released to the public under Freedom of Information legislation.
As with the Tower Hamlets case in 2010, the Council successfully argued before the Information Commissioner that releasing this information would be prejudicial to the prevention of crime. Unlike the Tower Hamlets case, however, the complainant decided to appeal to the Information Rights Tribunal: the Tribunal reversed the decision of the Information Commissioner.
Interestingly, the Appellant in this case - a Mr Yiannis Voyias - was heavily involved in squatting,...
Using last year's Council tax Base Form and the NHB data arising, English Councils brought 15,725 empty home back into...
Production company Tiger Aspect is producing a 3-part campaigning series for Channel 4 about the issue of empty homes. The...
The Executive is putting forward proposals to revise the Constitution of EHN which will mean among other things that Annual...
The House of Lords has fended off attempts to force council employees wanting to tender for council services under the Right to Challenge to set up a legal entity before proceeding with their bids, according to this story in the Housing and Property Law Daily.
We know that a number of empty homes practitioners have wondered about running empty homes services themselves from outside the..ah..protective framework of their local authority. That option remains, in principle at least.
The Empty Homes Network has written to Camilla Sheldon of DCLG about the Government's forthcoming national strategy on empty homes....
This is an unusual news story. The "news" is your contributions about Final EDMOs.
We want a place where people...
The HCA has now revealed the main outlines of its £100M empty homes programme. The announcement, such as it was,...
CLG are drafting a Govt. National Empty Homes Strategy. Their current capacity means that they can only carry out a...
In order to try and clarify the constraints on HCA's ability to fund empty homes work outside of its normal...
This CLG story is an update to remind people of the Government's intention to review the processes for changing the uses of property, particularly on a temporary basis. In this case the expectation is that change of use would be from one commercial use to another - but elsewhere changes have been trailed that would allow changes to from commercial to residential without necessarily needing planning permission. This article and its associated footnotes provide a good overview of where the process of reviewing the system has got to.
Empty homes officer Wendy Dearden used her dual role working for North Wales Homes and Denbighshire County Council to help...
We have learned that the Department of Communities and Local Government is preparing to launch a document setting out the...
A RICS survey is showing that private sector rents are expected to rise signifcantly in some parts of the country...
