Falkirk Council vows to tackle empty homes as it misses targets to get new tenants housed

Councillors heard that while the target to return empty properties – known as voids – to be re-let is 56 days, the average time this year has been almost double that at 101 days.

The report to Falkirk Council’s scrutiny committee said this was due to a number of reasons including staff shortages within building maintenance division, delays with utility companies and more properties being in a poor condition when tenants leave them.

Housing manager Kenny Gillespie said that they also recognise problems with the actual process of dealing with voids, which they are now looking to streamline.

Members of the committee heard that the lengthy waits are impacting on the number of houses available for the growing list of people waiting for a new home.

Falkirk South councillor Lorna Binnie (SNP) said that she often hears from people in the community anxious about when they will get the keys for their house.

She said: “They’ll say, ‘oh it’s been months’, because people are desperate to move in.”

She added that while she understands why void turnarounds are taking so long, she was concerned that a £3 million overspend on the Housing Revenue Account might make the problem even worse.

Director of communities Karen Algie said that there an action plan is now in place to reduce the number of voids, and they are looking at a “whole range of options”, although she admitted that this was being done while also reducing spend.

“We are going to monitor that really carefully over the next month to make sure we can see changes happening in the right way,” she said.

Independent councillor Robert Spears said that he judges the council’s performance by the number of enquiries he gets.

“You better believe that the enquiries are through the roof and we are busier than we’ve ever been,” he said.

His colleague, Councillor Brian McCabe, said housing also accounts for the highest number of issues people raised with him as a councillor.

He said: “I find it alarming that our figures are not great and I have yet to see what strategic route we as a council are putting in place to try and answer some of the questions that are being raised.”

The figures were part of an annual review of the council’s performance, which also revealed that on average, it now takes 329 days for homeless people in Falkirk to be given permanent accommodation.

Officers said that homelessness figures for Scotland are not yet available for this year, but it is unlikely that Falkirk will be above the national average.

Across Falkirk 132 new affordable homes have been delivered during 2023/24, exceeding the council’s annual target.

There was a slight shortfall in the number of former council houses being bought back, however, with 69 returning to council ownership, while the target is 80.

Members were told that in the past financial year, there had been a nine per cent reduction in properties available to purchase through the scheme.

In 2023/24, Falkirk Council housed 1237 applicants, including 496 (40.2 per cent) classed as home seekers – applicants that have been assessed as homeless in terms of homeless legislation – missing the council target of 45 per cent.

Presenting the report, Mrs Algie reminded councillors that it must be read in the context of the council’s financial challenges, which have meant a reduction in budgets and in staff.

She said: “We have really good teams and our performance shows that in areas we are outperforming the Scottish average. We do, however, have areas where we need to improve and we know that.”