Empty Dwelling Management Order

Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs) are a legal device used in England and Wales, which enable local authorities to put an unoccupied property back into use as housing. EDMOs were created by the Housing Act 2004, with the relevant legislation coming into effect in mid-2006; in the three and a half years to the end of 2010, however, only 43 had been issued.

A significant number of residential properties in Britain are empty at any one time; whilst a large proportion of these are empty on a temporary basis, for example during refurbishment or during changes in ownership, many remain unoccupied for long stretches of time. These properties pose a problem in two ways; they tend to decrease the quality of life in their area, by becoming magnets for vandalism and the like, and they indirectly contribute to the problem of homelessness by limiting the pool of available housing.

Local authorities have traditionally had a number of powers to force abandoned buildings back into use, most notably the power of compulsory purchase and enforced sale. In the first of these cases, the property is purchased by the council; in the second, the owner is compelled to offer it for sale in the open market. However, both of these required a forcible change of ownership, and especially with an enforced sale, there was no guarantee that the building would actually be put back into use.

In 2001, the Empty Homes Agency suggested that rather than force the properties to be sold, the local authorities could instead force them to be rented out to tenants, a "compulsory leasing" process. A parliamentary select committee adopted the idea, but government support for legislation was limited. In 2003, as the government drafted plans for housing reform, it issued consultation papers on a proposed form of "Empty Homes Management Orders", but they were not made part of the final Housing Bill. They were added to the bill, now titled as "Empty Dwelling Management Orders", in an amendment by David Kidney MP, with broad cross-party support.

Whilst they had broad parliamentary support, the EDMOs were strongly criticised in some sections of the media, with the Daily Express reporting that the government wanted to seize 250,000 homes, and a columnist in the Sunday Times declaring that Britain had become a "communist country".

...
Wikipedia