6:00am Thursday 14th August 2008
By Chris Hopper
A COUNCIL plans to seize disused homes as part of a war on landlords who own over 2,000 properties blighting Burnley streets.
Housing bosses at Burnley Council said they can also force owners to sell up to pay back council tax debts.
The measures, set to be rubber-stamped by senior councillors, are a response to the latest figures which show Burnley has 2,270 homes with no one in them - the highest number in Lancashire and more than double the national average.
It means council finance chiefs could be missing out on an annual council tax bill worth as much as £2.3million.
A new scheme - dubbed the Empty Homes Strategy - would launch a three-year drive to bring homes back into full use.
The masterplan includes:
• Handing out ‘empty dwelling management orders’ to take control of vacant properties for up to seven years
• Driving through enforced sales, meaning bosses can claw back council tax money rogue landlords have escaped paying
• Offering struggling first-time buyers first option on the ‘affordable’ houses acquired by the council
• Giving landlords the opportunity to sell vacant properties to developers so Burnley’s regeneration can be driven on.
The bold scheme - which will cost Burnley Council more than £1.3million this year - has been branded “ambitious” by council leader Gordon Birtwistle.
He added: “We have got thousands of empty properties in Burnley, most of them owned by landlords, and we want them to either put decent tenants in them or get them up to scratch and sell them to first-time buyers.
“Despite that, the number of empty properties is coming down now.
“We have been doing them up and selling them which brings some money in, too.
“But we have definitely got a problem and there are houses that people simply don’t want any more.”
Council figures show that, prior to the Empty Homes Strategy, 25 properties were acquired, with seven of these sold on.
The homes have brought £1,750 into the town hall coffers through council tax, with thousands of pounds more expected in future.
However, the size of the problem facing leaders was flagged up at a recent full council meeting when a resident from Brennand Street, in the Duke Bar area of Burnley, complained about the state of the road and its houses.
She was told that 20 of the homes - more than half the street - were currently standing empty.
Empty houses are categorised as those that have stood unoccupied for more than six months and “does not have a reasonable prospect of being brought back into use by the owner without local authority intervention”.
Meanwhile, opposition councillors have greeted the new initiative with caution.
Conservative councillor David Heginbotham, who is also a property developer, said Burnley needed jobs to tempt people into the town before empty homes could be filled.
He added: “I have always said you have got to get people from outside the town to live here.
“It is cheaper to buy a house in Burnley than in Manchester so it makes sense for people to move to afford a house.
“The empty properties are all liable for council tax but I don’t know if they know the whereabouts of the landlords.”
And Labour councillor and Manchester Road-based estate agent Howard Baker said: “We have a house in Barden Lane and it shows what you can do with a two-bedroom terrace so all these unoccupied homes could be done up to that standard, too.
“They should be encouraged to develop these houses.”
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