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North Yorkshire Council Seeks To Reduce Empty Homes But Won't Compromise Quality

Monday, 1 September 2025 06:00

The local authority says the average time a property is empty between tenants is around five months.

Nick Harne is North Yorkshire Council's Corporate Director for Community Development:

" March was 147 days. But just to stress, that's the average time. And what we're doing is a piece of work to break these down into three different categories of minor middling works and major works. And we're inheriting a significant number of what we'd call major work requirement properties.

"We don't want to re-let these in the state that we're inheriting them in. In future and over time, capital programs and investment in these properties will bring void times down, but currently because of the level of work we're doing on them the time takes quite a while. The actual overall number of voids though is coming down month by month."

Councillor Simon Myers agrees the local authority will not let substandard housing:

"There have been suggestions to me from some members of this authority that we shouldn't do any of this, and that it's more important that we just let them, even though we regard them as substandard. I can give an absolute commitment that this council will not let substandard property to new tenants. Our duty is to provide decent housing for people, not the sort of housing that causes the tragedies that we've seen in other authorities. So our commitment is to upgrade our housing to decent home standards."

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