On the 8th June 2022, Cheshire West and Cheshire council held a cabinet meeting regarding the Empty Homes Strategy 2022 – 2027.
The aim of the Empty Home Strategy is to unlock the housing potential of long term empty homes, which CW&C will do through quite a few different methods, mainly by conversation with the home owners and then if they can’t afford to do their homes up, they have financial offers there for them which are details they have in the report.
Councillor Matt Bryan present said his team had talked about strategies for this report but it was noted that if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. He was, of course, referring to the previous 5 year Empty Home Strategy that took place in 2016-2021 when 966 houses were brought back to market which was 65 empty homes over the target for that period.
Bryan went on to say; ‘The proposed target for the new strategy over the next 5 years is to get 1,000 empty homes back in use is really challenging in light of the significant progress we’ve already made reducing the number of long term empty homes.’
Councillor Lynn Joyce Gibbon who was on the opposing council wanted to know why this strategy was exactly the same as the previous one?
She went on to say; ‘Nothing is different, even the pictures. We have 965 new houses and we can’t afford a new picture. The offer, the words, the picture are all the same. Why? When the overall number of empty homes remains virtually the same 4,300 as 5 years ago, we’re treading water. If valuation is shown on page 46, what has been delivered? There’s been no valuation, nothing in the strategy about it.
What has worked?
What can be done better?
What is still relevant that should have been a minimum to determine whether changes would be advantageous .'
In 2016 it was said there are 2,211 empty homes but in this strategy it states that in 2016 there we 1,746 empty homes which is correct as this could mean about 10% down on the actual figure which would not be good.
Turning the attention back to Councillor Bryan, he went back to his original comment of ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it’. He said, ‘we’ve got a strong team behind this strategy who know exactly what they’re doing hence the results of completion and I think this should have cross party support.’
He went back to Councillor Gibbon and said ‘if we bring residential homes back into use for families and if we generally help people get those houses back into use with a grant service then we have priorities as a council to place our own people on our lists into these properties rather then return them to the private market so I’d like to praise this report and thank the officers involved.
Councillor Louise Gittins residing then went on to approve the Empty Homes Strategy 2022-2027 which was second by Councillor Shaw. Cllr Gittins asked for a show of hands in favour of the strategy and the motion was carried.
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