My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on bringing forward this amendment. This is certainly a problematic area. The original legislation in 2004 was very well intentioned in its creation of the capacity for local authorities to make an order to take over the management of empty properties. However, only a trickle of orders have been made since then. In the first four years, only 43 orders were made in the country as a whole; 17 were made in 2014. That is not to say that other actions, short of an order, were not taken, perhaps of the kind described by the noble Lord and by my noble friend Lord Kennedy. Nevertheless, there is a clear issue here. The previous Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, changed the rules in 2012 to require a longer period—up to two years, as opposed to the original six months—after which an order could be started. This might be thought a somewhat perverse approach, given the paucity of cases before that time.
There is clearly a need, and I have experience of that in the ward I represent in Newcastle. About four or five years ago, my attention was drawn to two terraced houses—they are what are called Tyneside flats, with a lower flat and stairs leading up to one over it. They were empty, but they did not look in bad condition and were not creating any hazard in the area. It turned out that they had been like that for several years; it was a long-term problem. I got the council on the case, but the process is extremely protracted and difficult. In this case, it was compounded by arguments about who owned the property. It was not a straightforward question of looking it up at the Land Registry. Even apart from that, it was a very protracted process. Eventually, the council reached the point when—either by making the order but not directly taking over the property, or by coming to an agreement with the owners—the properties could be let.
That was bad enough, but there is another case, not that far away, of a property which is owned by an elderly lady who lives somewhere else. It is in a shocking state and the only thing I have been able to have done about it is to get the hugely overgrown garden cut back and the place tidied up. It has been empty now for many years. I have tried, more than once, to get the council to take proceedings and I think that it is now looking at that. It is in a nice residential street and is a great blot on the landscape—which at least the previous ones were not—and it lets down the whole character of the neighbourhood. I suspect that this is a significant
issue and I hope that the Government will acknowledge that a properly considered view, based on evidence, should be formed.
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There are, of course, other actions available, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. There are others, too. Oxford, in particular, has taken quite a few initiatives short of this management process. If we are going to have a fallback position—and we must—then it is imperative that we review what is happening and the timescales. Perhaps this should be brought back from a two-year period to a six-month one in order to kick start the process and ensure that, as far as possible, it is less bureaucratic and more likely to be effective than the experience of the last 11 years has demonstrated it to be. I hope the Minister and the Government generally will look sympathetically on this amendment, which, as my noble friend said, we support.