Empty Residential Property (Hansard, 2 December 1987)

§ 16. Mr. Simon Hughes
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce legislation which obliges public or private owners of empty residential property to accept proposals for its use presented by housing associations, community groups or groups of people in housing need.

§ Mr. Waldegrave
No, but we are encouraging better use of the existing housing stock in the private sector by our proposals for deregulation in the Housing Bill and in the public sector by allocating resources through Estate Action, the housing associations programme and, more recently, the extra £25 million, which we are targeting on homelessness.

§ Mr. Hughes
Will the Minister look carefully at the Empty Property and Community Aid Bill, which was launched and sponsored by Shelter, IYSH, the empty property unit, and the empty property campaign just a week ago? Will he seriously consider whether we could amend the Housing Bill during its passage through the House to allow some of the empty property in private and public use to be used for short-term purposes to alleviate existing massive homelessness?

§ Mr. Waldegrave
I am sure that all hon. Members will support the intention behind the Bill. I shall certainly look closely at the provisions of the Bill. Some of them do not seem to be practicable, but others may be possible.

§ Mr. Maples
Does my hon. Friend agree that there are about as many empty properties as homeless families in London? Will he consider encouraging, or perhaps even compelling, local authorities to sell empty properties to people who are on their waiting lists if such properties have been empty for more than, say, six months?

§ Mr. Waldegrave
There is an element of compulsion in the Bill to which the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) referred. My hon. Friend mentioned the unacceptably high number of empty properties. There are bound to be some, but it is accurate to say that it is an unacceptably high number of empty properties. At the moment we are still proceeding by means of carrots rather than sticks. That is why we have been offering more allocations to local authorities to get many homes at least back into temporary use. We shall have to consider ideas of the more draconian kind that my hon. Friend mentioned.