Annual Impact Report 2024
Why a stategic approach to empty homes work is essential and what it can help to deliver
Mel Booth, Senior Housing Strategy Officer at Aberdeen City Council (ACC) talks about the importance of thinking strategically about empty homes work.
Adopting a strategic approach to empty homes work is essential in ensuring that empty homes professionals can progress beyond reactionary responses to empty properties causing issues in the community. Instead, they can take proactive measures to ensure that the level of empty homes in the city reduces and the root causes are identified. In Aberdeen, the Empty Homes team has implemented several strategic processes to complement our day-to-day operational work. The team has cultivated strong ongoing relationships with other ACC services which helps to ensure that each service contributes to the strategic goals of the council in a mutually beneficial manner. This is exemplified best by the Empty Homes Strategic Working Group which is attended by representatives of several ACC services and provides a platform for the Empty Homes team to link its strategic work with that of other services.
A recent example would be linking with the Heritage and Place programme, an area based funding programme that aims to contribute to the development of vibrant and sustainable places in Scotland. ACC were awarded grant funding for a development phase in the city centre, and the Empty Homes team were able to link in with the project team and provide them with data regarding empty homes that could be acquired or developed as part of this city centre regeneration. The project team were able to attend the Empty Homes Strategic Working Group and discuss methods of pursuing these properties with ACC’s Empty Homes, Building Standards, Legal and Private Sector Housing teams amongst others. This example shows how a collaborative approach to empty homes work can help to contribute to strategic goals of the local authority, in this case its goals surrounding city centre regeneration.
The Empty Homes team also utilises its working relationship with Council Tax to proactively identify empty properties before they have been reported to the service through complaints or enquiries. Council Tax provides the team with a list of properties who are paying the additional 100% levy, and the team reaches out to the owners of these properties to proactively offer assistance. This work is mutually beneficial for both services and is essential to ensuring that empty properties are being identified before they are causing issues in the community.
A strategic framework is also currently in development for the Empty Homes service which, while not yet completed, has been essential in encouraging the team to define an overarching vision for the service, alongside strategic actions and targets which will help the service to achieve this vision. The vision was written by incorporating elements from national and local strategies related to empty homes to allow the service to contribute to all of these while achieving its own goals, for example Housing to 2040 and ACC’s Local Housing Strategy.
Overall, the strategic work undertaken by Aberdeen’s Empty Homes team has been essential in delivering a service which contributes to the strategic goals of other services, as well as Aberdeen City Council in general. The service will continue to work proactively to reduce the number of empty properties in Aberdeen and foster strategic working relationships which help to achieve this.