Practical Law

Although shadow housing minister, Grant Shapps, had previously announced that local authority powers in relation to Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs) contained in Chapter 2 of Part 4 of the Housing Act 2004, (see Legal update, Statutory instruments are laid in Parliament to introduce Housing Act 2004 reforms) would be scrapped, Eric Pickles has now confirmed that these will be retained.

However, it is proposed that the regulations governing EDMOs will be amended to protect civil liberties and to limit what Pickles describes as local authorities’ use of these “draconian and heavy-handed” orders which he suggests may have been used to instigate inappropriate action against homeowners in vulnerable situations.  The examples that he uses to demonstrate alleged abuses of the orders include an attempt by an authority to obtain an EDMO against the properties of:

• A 96-year old as soon as he had died in a nursing home.
• A homeowner caring for her injured daughter in France. 

However, it appears that these examples are theoretical rather than factual since orders were not made in these cases. Indeed, the existing safeguards in the EDMO regime would have protected the particular individuals in the examples given since a Residential Property Tribunal, which has to authorise a local authority’s application for an interim EDMO,  would not do so without satisfying itself that the property that is the subject of the application does  not come within any of the exempt categories, such as the principal home of an absent owner (which would include the scenario of the woman nursing her sick daughter) or a home where the proprietor died and six months has not elapsed since the grant of representation (which would prevent an order being made against the home of an owner who had just died).

However, the fact that the coalition has changed its mind about scrapping EDMOs demonstrates a recognition that the orders are a useful tool for local housing authorities since they:

• Enable an authority  to step into the shoes of the owner of an unoccupied building and effectively take management control of a dwelling.
• Secure occupation for a specified period of time and where certain other conditions are met. 

The proposed amendments to EDMOs, which will be subject to consultation with interested parties,  mean that:

• Local authorities will only be able to use the powers on homes that have been empty for more than two years, whereas at the moment the minimum period before an application for an order can be made is 6 months.
• Local authorities will need to give owners three months’ notice of an order being made.
• Local authorities will only be able to use the powers on empty homes that affect neighbours, such as those that have become “magnets for vandalism, squatters and other forms of anti-social behaviour which blights the local neighbourhood” so that their ability to deal with certain cases such as new blocks of empty speculatively built flats will be limited.

What is clear is that the proposed changes, which will be introduced in secondary legislation, are unlikely to affect many cases since the power is generally only used in extreme cases that already meet the proposed new amendments and, according to the Empty Homes Agency, has had limited use as only 44 EDMOs have been made since 2006.

However, as previously reported, local authorities will have a new incentive from next year to bring empty properties back into use through a New Homes Bonus, under which the government will match the council tax raised from any council tax collected from a property that was previously empty, see Legal update, Housing Minister pledges funds to improve social housing and encourage new housing development.