Leeds Empties provides an Empty Homes Doctor service to owners of empty properties in Leeds, with support from Leeds City Council. Rob Greenland and Gill Coupland spoke at the national Empty Homes Network conference in Birmingham on 20th May about the service.

2. What we’ll talk about
• A quick recap
• An Empty Homes Doctor overview
• Report back on our first year
• Look forward to year 2

5. Call To Action – May 2012

9. Six month pilot
• Leeds City Council offered £10k funding
• Six months to try out a range of ideas that we
developed following the Call To Action
• Soon became clear that the Empty Homes
Doctor was the one that was going to work

10. April 2013 – 12 month contract
• £100,000: to work with
125 owners & to bring
25 homes back into use
• Opportunity for us to
work out how Leeds
Empties could best sit
alongside LCC approach

12. The idea behind the Doctor
• 90% of 5000 empty
homes privately owned
• Council focus primarily
on “priority” empties
• Could we fill a gap by
working differently with
others?
• And could we involve
local businesses?

13. How the Empty Homes Doctor works
1. The Council writes to owners on our behalf
2. Owners get in touch with us
3. We meet them at their property – work out what they
want to do, and what’s stopping them
4. We put together an Empty Homes Doctor report –
outlining options
5. We offer to work with them to bring home back into use

19. Some statistics (first 10 months)
• We worked with 137 owners
• 26 homes back into use
• 17 rented out
• 4 sold (3 through agents, 1 at auction)
• Current active caseload – around 50
• 40 well on their way to being brought back into use
• 20 passed back to Leeds City Council

20. Some statistics (first 10 months)
• Half of the homes worked on were in 4 inner-city wards
• 56 people owned more than one property
• 17 owners had inherited the home
• 15 were first time buy-to-let investors
• 23 people whose circumstances had changed eg moved
away
• 4 people had moved into long term care

22. Where we work best
• The owner is motivated,
but not sure what to do
• Has money/borrowing
power to do any
necessary work
• In particular: people who
inherit a home, people
who move from Leeds,
people moving into care

23. Where we’ve struggled
• The owner is in a difficult
financial situation – no cash,
no borrowing power,
negative equity
• The home is in a more
challenging area for rental
• In particular – small-scale
landlords with 1 or 2
properties

24. What we offer that’s different
• We work closely with local businesses
• We can deal with “low priority” long-term empties
• We can work intensively with people where necessary
• We get actively involved in trying to solve problems
• We get lots of publicity for work on empty homes
• We’ve attracted other income & support
• We are not the council!

25. April 2014 – new contract agreed

26. How things will change this year
• Target – doubled to 50 homes back in use
• LCC focuses on inner-city, higher priority empties – we
focus on outer-area, lower priority homes
• We develop specific services for particular groups of
owners – eg owners of homes empty 5 years +
• The council will share data with us, so we can write to
owners ourselves.
• We’ve negotiated referral fees with businesses

27. Much more to do – but we’re onto something

28. www.leedsempties.org.uk
@leedsempties
home@leedsempties.org.uk