Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Empty Dwelling Management Orders in enabling local authorities to (a) manage and (b) bring back into use empty residential properties.

Local authorities are equipped with a range of powers and strong incentives to tackle empty homes. This includes Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EMDOs). In certain circumstances, local authorities can apply for an EDMO to temporarily take over the management of a property that has been empty for more than two years and bring it back into use.

It is for local authorities to decide when to use these powers and to assess the effectiveness to manage their particular circumstances.

The number of long term empty homes remains substantially lower than when records began in 2004.?At May 2010 over 300,000 homes in England had been standing empty for longer than 6 months. As of October 2019 the number of long term empty properties had fallen to 225,845.