My childhood world was a 200-yard stretch of London Suburban Streetscape built in 1938. There were twenty buildings on each side of the street divided vertically down the middle…each half a different colour…making eighty English Semi-Detached houses. The Halifax Building Society has calculated that 700 000 of England’s 18 million houses sit empty…up from 300 000 six months ago. The Lancashire town of Burnley comes top of the Halifax list with one house in sixteen empty. There are twenty-one areas where at least one house in thirty is empty. If Crookston Road in Eltham were an average street, three of the houses would be empty. I suspect the true figure is much higher.
A couple of years ago I was asked to estimate the number of empty houses in Rye. I reckoned that in the town centre one in three were empty much of the time. Twenty years ago I lived on Martha’s Vineyard for six months. The island’s permanent population was 5 000 but doubled from mid-April to mid-October. During the summer vacation from June to August it rose to 50 000…peaking at weekends to 100 000 or more as day trippers from Boston and New York poured off the ferries. I was guessing that Rye shows something of the Martha’s Vineyard pattern.
Counting empty houses is rather like estimating civilian casualties in a war-zone. Active enquiry can often produces figures that are ten to twenty times those emerging from passive surveys. I wonder how the John Hopkins Statisticians…who came up with estimates of 650 000 civilian deaths in Iraq…would tackle the job of estimating the number of empty dwellings in Rye? The definition of ‘empty’ is critical…as is the method used to gather the data.
After Christmas this question will no longer be academic. In July the Labour Government gave Local Councils the right to apply to an independent tribunal for an Empty Dwelling Management Order (EDMO) on houses standing vacant for six months. It is a form of Compulsory Purchase Order permitting Local Council to grab empty houses and rent them out for seven years before returning them to the owner…if one can be found. These are presented as joint ventures between Local Councils and House Owners. The Council spends what is needed to renovate the place, chooses suitable tenants and collects the rent they hand out to them. In principle owners get a half share of the profits.
Government Ministers justify their six figure salaries and lavish pensions by meddling. One of New Labour’s flagship policies for Constitutional Meddling fell at the first hurdle when the North East rejected a Regional Council by a margin of 5 to 1. ‘Just another cabal of politicians with their fingers in the till’ was the view. New Labour regrouped and dispatched David Milliband and Ruth Kelly to remove the remnants of local autonomy. Next week Whitehall issues a White Paper to rewrite the rules about Local Bylaws. More Regional Administration from Brussels with Whitehall’s connivance…and without Westminster’s approval…dressed up as Sham Subsidiarity.
Rye Conservation Society is the most successful conservation society in the country on its own terms…which are to freeze the town’s development into a 200-year old time warp by glorifying Heritage and Nostalgia to the benefit of a few commercial interests in the town. But the Rye Conservation Society will have no power to challenge EDMOs.
Yet these new-fangled New Labour devices represent an opportunity for Rye to take control of its housing stock. The trick is to set up a Local Licensing System before Empty Dwelling Orders start rolling out of Bexhill Town Hall. The Home Owner Class which is responsible for empty residential properties in Rye are unlikely to approve of the Social Engineering that Rother District Council will foist upon them with these EDMOs. This is how Rye should go about it.
A House Owner can fight off an EDMO by having a specific plan for the use of the empty property. Rye Town Council should help by giving each councillor a list of streets where they must work with local residents to identify empty houses…in effect creating a new Rye Domesday Book. At the same time Rye Town Council should invite adjacent Parish Councils to join Rye in drawing up a common Bylaw for Empty Dwelling Usage Permits (EDUPs).
EDUPs should be valid for different periods depending on proposed usage and the scheme made self-financing and non-profit by charging Permit Fees. Rye Council should maintain a Town A-List of Tenants. Recent Norwegian experience suggests that House Owners prefer Local Tenants to District Councils as Joint Venture Partners.