This Petition calls on North Yorkshire Council to reduce Scarborough’s Weaponness and Ramshill Ward Long Term Empty Homes by 50% or more in the next 36 months.

Our Ward has about 80 long-term empty properties, and Scarborough as a whole had 690 unoccupied for at least 6 months in 2021. These appear to be the latest figures. This is separate from second homes/short term holiday lets (Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Expedia etc), and are a separate issue.

According to the Empty Homes Partnership, each empty home costs between £8,600 and £10,400 yearly, a problem in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and nationally.

Following the creation of the North Yorkshire Council Unitary Authority, the knowledge and experience of long-term empty homes in North Yorkshire became hidden from view. That council’s abolition caused an earlier Scarborough Borough Council Empty Homes team to disappear. It is only recently that North Yorkshire began a piece of work to establish the current landscape of empty properties across North Yorkshire and to look at how they have been dealt with historically in each area.

But our Ward has had many empty homes for much longer than this, and nothing much is happening to them. Today North Yorkshire Council is working on a reactive/reported-in basis only whilst it considers what to do. This feels too little, too late.

Solution

This petition is to ask North Yorkshire Council to step up efforts to put our Ward’s long-term empty homes, and Scarborough’s empty homes, back into use by:

a) Reintroducing the Empty Homes Officers that Scarborough Borough Council used to have, and Selby continues to employ,

b) Creating and publishing an Empty Homes Register to help councils connect property owners of vacant homes with potential buyers or renters,

Follow the lead of successful programs by other UK Councils to unite private and public stakeholders through various financial assistance programs aimed at refurbishing, updating, and selling or leasing our vacant Weaponness and Ramshill properties.

Will you support my Empty Home Petition, for Weaponness and Ramshill, and Scarborough?

Chris Clark

Labour Town Councillor for Weaponness and Ramshill