Annual Impact Report 2024

This year EHOs recorded 1,875 properties brought back into use. This is the highest annual total to date.

This was a 49% increase on the 2022 total of 1,257 and almost 33% higher than the previous highest annual total of 1,412 prior to the pandemic.

Homes brought back to use

Information on how long the home was empty for was available for 92% (1642) of these properties.

The increased number of homes brought back to use has been driven by a large increase in homes that had been empty for less than a year. However, this has not come at the expense of work on older cases. The number of homes brought back to use that had been empty for five years or more increased by 26% to 282.

Active cases

Of the 4,345 active cases EHOs have at present, information was provided on length of time empty for 70% of properties.

Properties empty for 5 to 10 years and 10 years or longer combined make up just over 37% of current active caseload. Bringing these homes back to use will often take several years and be fraught with difficulties. Finding out who the owner is, where they are now, whether they are alive, or who their next of kin or executor is if they are deceased, can all take time. Where an owner has died, it is often the case that no one has taken out a grant of confirmation on their estate, and relatives may be unwilling or unable to do this where they know that the property is in a state of severe disrepair and will require a lot of expensive renovation work to make it habitable and suitable for selling or renting on the open market. In some instances, the search for surviving relatives itself becomes a barrier to bringing the property back to use as genealogists scour records spanning several continents and several generations and remain unable to find anyone with a full or partial title to the property.

The properties are unlikely to be suitable for compulsory purchase orders, often due to property condition or location, which means that there is little that can be done to bring the home back to use.

The SEHP would welcome any additional enforcement options that can be used to unlock these homes, and other stuck properties that have been empty for several years and allowed to deteriorate to such an extent that they are a blight on the community and a source of extreme stress and anxiety for neighbours.