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Bringing empty homes back into use

Empty homes

We aim to contact the owners of empty properties, and offer advice and support to those wishing to bring their properties back into use.  We do this by providing advice and support to owners/landlords on letting and managing a property, and we have a number of initiatives to support this including:

  • ‘Opening Doors’ – a direct letting scheme
  • Damage Deposit and Rent in Advance Schemes
  • Landlord Guide
  • Empty Homes Grants

If you would like more information about these schemes, please contact us.

If the owner does not want to bring the property back into use we will consider using our enforcement powers to bring the property back into use - but we will not use enforcement powers until all other avenues to encourage the owner to bring the property back into use have been exhausted. 

We may have to prioritise the action that we take, and we will therefore take enforcement action in cases which will deliver the greatest impact. This is likely to include:

  • those which are dangerous and pose a risk to the public
  • those most in need by those unable to access the housing market
  • those having the biggest impact on surrounding neighbours
Empty Homes Strategy (1.45Mb)

This document is the North Norfolk Empty Homes Strategy 2006-2011

Enforcement Policy for Empty Homes (0.13Mb)

This is the North Norfolk Enforcement Policy for Empty Homes, effective from 1 April 2009.

Factsheet 3 - Empty homes (0.06Mb)

A factsheet on what an empty home is, and how we can help bring them back into use

Contact Housing Tel: 01263 516375
Email: housing@north-norfolk.gov.uk

Emergency out-of-hours: 01223 849782

 

External Contacts

Performance

Red Cross Whilst the Housing Team's intervention has brought about some positive outcomes for a limited number of properties, this continues to be a challenging area of work where enforcement action is often complex and protracted. Two empty properties in the private sector were brought back in to use, the objective of ten for the 2010/11 year not being met.  

>More Performance Indicators