Meeting our strategic objectives – 4 – Supporting the Network of Empty Homes Officers

The SEHP supports the national network of EHOs. This includes providing comprehensive training and introduction to empty homes work for newly recruited officers, advice on complex and difficult cases, ongoing consultancy and advice for the officer network, as well as supporting the case for empty homes work in authorities which are not yet part of the network. To achieve these aims, we organise regular best practice groups, provide topical workshops, deliver face-to-face training, provide guides and tools, and host an annual conference.

For this section of the report, we received 23 responses. What has been reflected from these returns is that all of the network value the opportunity to meet and learn from each other.

We asked officers –

Rate the usefulness of Best Practice meetings.

After the initial lockdown in 2020, meetings have been held digitally using MS Teams. To make these meetings as useful as possible, we sought opinions from officers’ mid-year, on what actions we can take in the future. There seems to be a split in opinion, with some calling for smaller regional in person meetings and others preferring digital attendance. Some of the comments are captured below:

This is reflected in the conference feedback as well, where there was a balanced split between wanting to participate in person and online due to the ongoing pandemic, which is why we made the decision early on to host our conference in a hybrid format. There were 90 delegates in total.