Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2024
I am happy to come back to Mr Macpherson on that point and give a more accurate timescale.
Mr Macpherson and a few others said that the City of Edinburgh Council has made some progress. We have been working with it on the voids issue but, at the moment, it has 7,200 empty homes. The question is what more we need to do in working with the council on that issue. Mr Choudhury mentioned that. We need to work more closely with the council. I congratulate it on bringing the voids figure down, but there needs to be more focus on bringing its empty homes figure down, too.
I will mention a number of other things. The audit that I talked about highlights the fact that local authorities would not have made such progress without the partnership’s influence and supporting role, for which I thank it again.
We are talking about a raft of measures to bring empty homes back into use. We have talked about providing an additional £40 million to support local authorities to acquire existing properties. We have legislated for a six-month grace period from the empty homes council tax payment, which supports new owners to take on and refurbish long-term empty homes. There is also the continuing work that I mentioned on the compulsory purchase scheme, as well as support for local authorities to consider the ways that they can use existing powers to unlock empty homes. We have also amended guidance to encourage local authorities to use ring-fenced council tax revenue to support empty homes services and innovative projects, and a few local authorities are considering that. Those are some of the things that we have been discussing.
I am also pleased to see the partnership’s first test and learn pilot with Homes for Good, and I commend that fantastic work, which is going from strength to strength. It is also building on its use of lottery funding to bring empty homes back into use and is now partnering with Capital Credit Union to unlock more homes. Other pilot schemes include those by Argyll and Bute health and social care partnership and by South of Scotland Community Housing.
However, we must do more and must leave no stone unturned in bringing properties back into use, which is why we are focusing on the role of privately owned empty homes in addressing the housing emergency. We continue to consider how to increase the levers to tackle that issue and have been reaching out to local authorities to see how we can best support them. I will touch on that in a moment.
I am keen to see innovative ideas coming forward, new partnerships being forged and collaborations being developed. We must all work together to identify the targeted interventions that will make the biggest difference. The partnership’s strategic empty homes framework, co-produced by local authorities, provides a solid foundation for doing so by developing strategic and integrated approaches. I want to see all local authorities developing those because a number of local authorities do not have empty homes strategies or empty homes officers. I challenge all local authorities to ask themselves whether they can do more to bring empty homes back into use. We all agree that privately owned empty homes are a wasted resource and can blight our communities.
I was at the Scottish Association of Landlords conference today, where the empty homes issue came up. There is an opportunity to see what the private rented sector can do to work with the Empty Homes Partnership. I am aware of one partnership in Perth and Kinross where that is happening, where they are looking at developing a leasing scheme. There are opportunities for other local authorities to look at that.
We must work together to step up our endeavours to bring empty properties back into use as warm, safe and secure homes. We remain committed to the work of the partnership and to tackling that issue as a priority action in our housing strategy.
I again thank Gordon MacDonald for bringing the debate to the chamber.