North Northamptonshire Council sets out plans to give empty homes a new lease of life through range of enforcement measures

With around 400 long-term vacant homes in North Northamptonshire, the authority’s new empty homes strategy sets out various options for the council to reduce the blight caused by vacant properties and support community regeneration.

A report will be going to the council’s place environment and scrutiny committee next week to review the strategy before it goes to the executive for formal adoption.

The strategy says: “Empty homes are a wasted resource in the face of rising housing needs. They have negative impacts and can attract anti-social behaviour, degrade neighbourhoods, cause unauthorised occupation by squatters and in extreme cases arson.

“Clear benefits for local authorities and the local community accrue from the re-use of empty properties. They include the provision of improved quality and choice of housing accommodation for the residents of North Northamptonshire, increased council tax revenue and reduced expenditure by eliminating the need to board them up to keep them secure.”

It sets out a number of enforcement powers available to councils, including enforced sales which allows a council to sell a property and recover debts, a compulsory purchase order (CPO) which guarantees that the property is brought back into decent standard and use, and an empty dwelling management order (EDMO) which enables the council to take control of an empty property to secure occupation and proper management of the building.

It adds that tougher enforcement would only be considered once the empty homeowner has already been engaged with and no work has taken place to remediate the property.

There is no current formal requirement for local authorities to monitor and report on long-term empty properties or any mandatory requirement to bring them back into use.

NNC said that officers have been dealing with long-term empty properties in a ‘reactive manner’ up until this point, by following up on complaints of anti-social behaviour, or empty properties that pose a risk for people to enter and cause harm.

It says its new strategy will give officers more leverage to encourage empty homeowners to do more in terms of the wider works required to bring a property back into use.

The announcement of the new strategy follows a decision made by full council to start charging homeowners double council tax from April 2026, when their property has been empty for more than one year.

The full strategy will be taken to the executive in May for final approval.