Latest News
Tougher approach to tackle empty homes in Pendle
Published: Wednesday, 21st March 2018
More empty homes in Pendle will be tackled as the Council’s Executive agreed a tougher line to sort out the problem of long term empty homes and empty houses which have become an eye-sore.
Leader of the Council, Councillor Mohammed Iqbal said: “This is a good decision and it means that we can use Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) to buy more houses which have been empty for a long time.
“A new rolling programme will mean we can also buy empty houses which are in such poor condition that they have a bad impact on some local neighbourhoods."
Councillor Asjad Mahmood, who leads on housing for Pendle, added: “We’re a very active Council in tackling the problem of empty houses through our Empty Homes Plan.
“We have an Empty Homes Officer dedicated to dealing with this and over the last nine years the number of empty homes in Pendle has reduced from 2,131 to 976.
“That’s a substantial drop of 1,155 empty homes - a reduction of over 54%.
“We are making a big a difference but there are still some individual problem properties we need to tackle.
“In December we agreed a fund of £150,000 for compulsory purchases.
“This fund will help us to buy properties where the owners are either untraceable or have refused to carry out any work to bring the homes back into use."
Pendle Council will then sell the properties on to people who are willing to get empty homes back into use, as part of an ongoing programme to improve neighbourhoods in Pendle.
RSS version