Making empty homes available
Making empty homes available again
Quickly re-letting homes when a customer has left is vital to our efforts in offering more people an affordable place to live.
The number of empty properties we have has increased in the last 12 months for several reasons. This year we’ve had to prioritise work in tenanted properties to meet legal requirements, such as the installation of carbon monoxide alarms for properties with a fixed gas appliance.
This has meant moving more resources from working on empty properties to homes where people are already living.
In addition, we’re also seeing a deterioration in the condition of properties that people have vacated. As a result, more properties are requiring major repairs and are empty longer while we bring them back up to a lettable standard.
Despite these challenges, we have plans to make more empty properties available for letting sooner.
Here’s some key information on letting empty properties in 2022/23:
£6.1m
spent on improving empty properties so they were ready for new tenants.
496
average number of empty properties over the last 12 months.
86 days
average time it took for us to check an empty property, carry out minor repairs and let it out to a new family or tenant.
201 days
average time it took us to check an empty property, carry out major repairs, and re-let it.
90%
of customers satisfied or very satisfied with the letting process.
94%
of customers satisfied or very satisfied with the overall condition of their home at the time of letting.