Draft Empty Home Policy

Thank you for your comments. This consultation has now closed and the feedback is being considered.

Council policies are the strategic link between the Council’s vision and values, pledges and outcomes and its day to day operations. In many cases, policies are critical to ensure the Council complies with its legislative and regulatory obligations and applicable standards.

At West Lancashire Borough Council (WLBC), we are always striving to improve the services we provide to our tenants and leaseholders. The purpose of this policy is to set out the Council's approach to dealing with empty homes to ensure that the Council provides an efficient and customer focused service which:

• Complies with regulatory and legislative requirements.
• Ensures value for money in repairing empty homes and achieving the relet standard.
• Balances the need to minimise rent loss whilst letting empty homes to the right applicant in terms of our allocations policy.
• Maximises customer satisfaction in relation to the standard of a tenant's new home.
• Is consistent with our Asset Management Strategy.

It is important that we gather our tenants and leaseholders views and feedback on the policy so we are able to include, where possible, any suggested changes.

We would really appreciate if you could give us some of your time to firstly review the draft policy which can be found here and in the documents section to the right of this page and, to give us your thoughts and feedback through the survey below.