Empty Homes Agency

The Empty Homes Agency was established in 1992 by Antony Fletcher with assistance from Serge Lourie as a registered charity in England that works to help people create homes from empty properties and campaigns for more empty homes to be brought into use for the benefit of those in housing need. In 2010 it changed its operational names to Empty Homes. The founding director was Bob Lawrence.

The Empty Homes Agency is a charitable industrial and provident society, as well as a charitable housing association, and a member of the National Federation of Housing. It is a registered charity in England, No. 27697R, but is registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 and thus not registered with the Charity Commission. In 2003 30% of its funds came from the UK Government through the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Heklen Williams was appointed as Chief Executive in 2014. Former Chief Executive David Ireland was often quoted in the housing press, and was a respected spokesperson for empty homes work. Recent media coverage has included an interview alongside the Dutch architect Ineke Hulshof on the BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours, and articles in several media outlets concerning the 12,000 ‘unofficial’ empty dwellings in England discovered by researchers at Empty Homes.

The charity publishes year statistics on the number of empty homes in England. Notably in 2009 Empty Homes estimated that there were one million empty homes in the UK, the highest level for a decade. The charity has also put out numerous publications on how to bring empty properties back into use, for both owners as well as members of the public.

The charity highlights the level of housing need in the UK and believes that bringing more empty homes into use provides more homes that in turn helps to ease housing need. The charity has mounted several campaigns aimed at changing government policy to help more empty homes to be brought into use.

Its successes include successfully lobbying the government to introduce Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs) – legislation to enables local authorities to take over the management control of dwellings that have been empty for six months or more in a forced lease scheme. The legislation caused considerable controversy although they have only been issued a handful of times since the legislation came into practice in 2006.

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Wikipedia