Empty Homes Agency Projects
Environmental Impact Of Empty Homes
This project seeks to gain a better understanding of the lifetime environmental costs of different ways of creating housing. Fundamentally it asks what is less damaging to the environment producing housing out of existing buildings or building new?
The Empty Homes Agency carried out some brief research into this question in 2005 comparing a single new house to a single refurbished home. The results were dramatic showing about 6 times as much CO2 produced from building the new one as refurbishing the old one. There has been a great deal of public and academic interest in this research, but its very limited nature has meant that firm conclusions cannot be drawn. Other questions such as lifetime CO2 costs have not been answered at all. For example, does the better insulation values achieved in new houses outweigh the energy costs incurred in their construction? We don’t know. What is needed is a wider study that more fully explores the potential environmental savings of creating housing supply from reusing existing buildings. This project aims to answer these questions. more>>
LEPOF
The forum serves to share information and develop good practice amongst those who are working to tackle the problem of empty properties inLondon, those involved in front line delivery as well as those developing strategies and intiatives. more >>
Local Government Support
A central campaign by the Agency for many years has been to encourage Local Authroities to develop an empty property strategy supported by an empty property officer. Now the vast majority of Local Authorities have such a strategy either as a free-standing document or as an integral part of their housing strategy.
We are campaigning to promote the need for local authorities to have an empty property strategy within their wider Housing Strategy and a dedicated Empty Property Officer (EPO) to tackle empty properties in areas where there is high demand. This is a vital element of local authority work and it is very important that it is adequately resourced.
Networking is another invaluable resource for EPOs and we are committed to ensuring that every EPO is a member of a regional forum. We are also in dialogue with the Regional Housing Boards.
Do you know who handles empty property work in your local authority? Without an EPO empties will stay that way. We also work closely with the National Association of Empty Property Practitioners (NAEPP).
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Empty Property Hotline
The Empty Property Hotline is run by the Empty Homes Agency, and has been set up to provide advice to owners on their options on bringing their empty property back int o use, but we also take reports of empties from the public who want to see something dobne about the problem. We can also put you in touch with other housing-related organisations. more >>