Oral Answers to Questions

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman was characteristically ingenious in the construction of his question, and we are grateful to him—I say that in all sincerity—but I advise the House that it was in any case my intention to get to Question 19, and I remain cautiously optimistic that we shall do so.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

14. What assessment he has made of the rate of change in the number of empty homes since May 2010.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

The number of homes empty for more than six months is now at its lowest level since records began. This Government have achieved a year-on-year reduction in long-term empty homes through council tax incentives such as the new homes bonus, opportunities to increase council tax and a Government programme of £200 million for empty homes funding.

[Jason McCartney]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is totally perverse that Labour-run Kirklees council continues to forge ahead with building homes on greenfield sites when there are thousands of empty properties and numerous brownfield sites in my beautiful part of west Yorkshire?

[Stephen Williams]

The national planning policy framework does indeed incentivise local authorities to bring forward brownfield sites first, and the Government want 90% of suitable brownfield land to have permissions in place through local development orders by 2020. With regard to my hon. Friend’s local authority in Kirklees, there are 718 long-term empties for which it charges the council tax premium, raising £387,000. If it worked with the owners to bring those properties back into use, it would get £783,000 in new homes bonus this year, plus £4.7 million over the full six years that the funding is available.