Lewisham Council has decided to continue using Liberata’s Empty Homes Review Service, after their 2023 CTB1 Submission, to maximise New Homes Bonus funding in 2024.
While we have data that shows that starting the review long before October’s CTB1 deadline will maximise the effectiveness of the review and subsequently increase New Homes Bonus funding, this is a first time that a council has effectively “carried on” with the work in the same year.
In 2021, Lewisham decided to benefit from Liberata’s Empty Homes Review Service for the first time since 2018 and subsequently decided to run a review with us again in 2022. These reviews have generated an estimated £1,000,000 of additional New Homes Bonus funding for the Council.
Starting another review so soon after the CTB1 deadline will certainly increase the New Homes Bonus funding available during 2024 but will, in addition, improve the accuracy of Council records ahead of Annual Billing.
And there are additional benefits from the Empty Homes Review Service: reducing the number of Long Term Empty properties will:
- Reduce anti-social behaviour associated with empty homes
- Stop neighbouring properties becoming harder to sell (or having reduced values)
- Allow the reuse of empty properties for the most vulnerable in society
Liberata’s Empty Homes Review service is market leading: across the councils that we worked with in 2023 we managed to remove an average 27% from each councils’ Long Term Empty Property List and delivered an average £565,166 of additional New Homes Bonus funding for each local authority that we worked with.
