A scheme to help bring empty homes back into use has been backed by Cheshire East Council.
The aim of the newly-launched National Empty Homes Loan Fund (NEHLF) is to help tackle the country's housing shortage.
In Cheshire East there are currently 1,371 properties that have been empty for between six months and a year. In addition, a further 944 homes have been empty for longer than two years. In England as a whole there are more than 710,000 empty homes.
Cheshire East Council, the charity Empty Homes and central government are managing the NEHLF locally and the Ecology Building Society, a specialist mortgage lender that supports sustainable communities, will administer it.
The NEHLF will allow access to secured loans of up to £15,000 at a fixed five per cent interest rate and funding will be available to individuals aged 18 and over, who own a property that has been empty for six months or more.
The scheme will operate alongside the Council's existing Empty Homes Assistance scheme, which offers homeowners loans of up to £10,000 to carry out repairs to bring their empty homes back into use.
Councillor Don Stockton, Cheshire East Cabinet member in charge of housing, planning, economic development and regeneration, said: "We know that many properties are lying empty in the Borough because owners simply do not have the money needed to bring them back up to a habitable standard. This new initiative we are supporting will give a real boost to helping to tackle this."
The NEHLF is funded by a £3m grant from central government and should provide loans to get more than 2,000 properties back into use nationwide. The scheme is backed by 39 local authorities.
For more information, full details of the scheme can be found at www.emptyhomes.com and More information about the Council's Empty Homes Assistance scheme is available on the Council's website.
Comments
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I suspect the take up will be low. Cheshire East Council think that they have a housing crisis, but is it in Wilmslow? Seem to be plenty for sale, especially if you include Handforth, AE and Poynton. Add Woodford Garden Village and the Handforth Dean housing proposed, then I just don't see it.
Concentrating on our brown fields and office conversions in Wilmslow would give us more housing, IF it was proven to be needed, with a recycling theme as well. Broad brush numbers from central government can't be applied precisely to each and every town or village. Some are ahead of the game whilst others lag behind. Wilmslow isn't a laggard IMHO.