Planning notices could be served on owners of dilapidated homes

Thursday 27 October 2022

Owners of vacant properties could be served with official notices to bring dilapidated homes back into use, the Housing Minister has said.

Deputy David Warr said that he was preparing a number of options to get more empty properties lived in, and would present them to States Members at the end of November.

Addressing a panel of backbenchers on Wednesday, the minister revealed that one of them would be serving a ‘Land Condition Notice’ which can be issued through the Planning Law, which obliges owners to make their property safe. 

The 2002 Planning and Building Law gives officers various powers, including the repair or removal of dilapidated buildings and the 'proper maintenance' of land.

Article 84 of the law, for instance, states that: “If it appears to the Chief Officer that a building is in a ruinous or dilapidated condition, the Chief Officer may serve a notice requiring that the building or a specified part of it be demolished, repaired, decorated or otherwise improved and that any resulting rubbish be removed.”

Addressing the Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel at his quarterly hearing with backbenchers, Deputy Warr said that another option might be serving an ‘Empty Dwelling Management Order’.

In the UK, local authorities can take over the management of certain houses that have been empty for at least two years by seeking an ‘EDMO’. 

Previously, a tax on empty properties has been suggested as another option.

The latest Census revealed that there were 4,027 vacant homes in Jersey in March last year – meaning that almost one in ten private dwellings were empty.

It prompted Deputy Montford Tadier to lodge a proposal to force the Government to present options on how empty properties can be brought back into use.

The Deputy won the subsequent debate, with virtually all Members supporting his call for ministers to come back to the Assembly with a plan.

Conceding that the new Government’s response was a month behind schedule, Deputy Warr said the proposals would be presented next month.

He also accepted that they options would lead to intervention in the private housing market, but it was a moral issue.

“Should we be building on green fields when houses are lying empty?” he said. “I think we have the public on our side but with the expectation that we recoup any money spent.”

Deputy Warr also raised the possibility of introducing a loans scheme to help the owners of vacant homes make their properties habitable again.

After revealing that 4,000 homes had been empty on Census Day, the Government later provided a breakdown on why about half of those properties had been vacate.