Neil Darby

Liberal Democrat Councillor for Ingol & Tanterton Learn more

Read more on this

Read more on this

£91m to restore empty homes

by neildarby on 24 June, 2013

Towns across England will receive £91m to help bring empty homes back into use, Liberal Democrat Communities Minister and Bath MP Don Foster announced yesterday. Over 6,000 disused homes and commercial premises will benefit from the scheme.

The funding will be spent on refurbishment in areas where empty properties have commonly led to problems such as squatting, rat infestation and collapsing house prices, driving remaining residents away – particularly in the Midlands and the North.

Of the £91m fund, £119,000 will go to Developing Health and Independence (DHI), who will restore 10 homes in the Bath area. This is on top of £126,000 DHI received last year to restore 18 properties.

Commenting, Don Foster said:

“The Government is doing everything possible to tackle the problem of empty homes and urban blight.  Today I’m announcing we’re going to do even more, with towns across England benefiting from £91m to refurbish over 6,000 empty properties to get them back into use.  This will bring people, shops and jobs back to once abandoned areas, and provide extra affordable homes we so badly need.

“We have already made very good progress, cutting the number of long term empty homes by 40,000 since 2010, but with thousands of people in this country desperate to buy a home and areas still suffering problems of urban blight, we must go further still.”

don-foster-pic-pa-749036280

   Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>