The district council is to adopt a new empty property strategy, which will cover both empty homes and disused commercial buildings.
The move comes after new figures showed that around one in 10 commercial properties in the Staffordshire Moorlands were standing empty.
There are 325 business premises across the district that are currently vacant, with 290 of these empty for six months or more.
Council officers told the Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee that the authority was seeing success in its work to bring empty homes back into use, (ITALICS writes local democracy reporter Phil Corrigan).
There are 325 business premises across the district which are currently vacant, with 290 of these empty for six months or more.
Staffordshire Moorlands District Council now plans to adopt a new empty property strategy, which will cover both empty homes and disused commercial buildings.
The number of empty homes has fallen from 991 to 840 over the last year, with the number vacant for over six months falling from 735 to 554.
Tools available to the council include charging a council tax premium of up to 300%, and carrying out an enforced sale to change the ownership of an empty home.
But fewer tools exist in relation to empty commercial properties – although the Government recently gave local authorities a new power to auction the lease of persistently vacant high street shops.
Joanne Wheeldon, head of revenues and benefits, said: “Unfortunately there are no premiums we can set for empty properties in the business rates system, which is set nationally.
“Some empty business premises may be so dilapidated that the valuation office may have taken them out of the valuation list. That could mean they aren’t even liable to pay business rates.
“We are aware that there are huge buildings within the area that have been standing empty for a long time, but they are likely not to be paying business rates.
“We are waiting for more guidance from central government and more powers to be able to do more work on commercial buildings.”
The strategy states that the council can take action if it receives complaints about an empty commercial property causing a public health issue or a statutory nuisance.
“Letters of encouragement” will be sent to the owners of long-term empty properties. Problematic empty properties will be identified for action “in proportion to available resources and funding”.
Coun James Aberley, who is a commercial landlord, suggested that the number of empty properties was due to economic conditions, and that enforcement action would not help.
He said: “The economic climate for renting commercial property in the Staffordshire Moorlands is harder than I’ve known it in the last 20 years.
“Don’t come down too hard on landlords – they want them filled. They don’t need the council to keep poking them, they’re trying to get them rented out. Adding more stick to the carrot doesn’t particularly help.”
Martin Owen, director for finance and customer services, gave assurances that enforcement would always be a last resort.
He said: “We’ve got new powers from the Government – we’re still working out exactly what that means. We’ve also put an investment into our teams to tackle empty properties so we have extra officers.
“Our intention is not to cause additional problems, but to try and work with the property owners. If we can see that someone is trying to get the property promoted to get people in, we’ll do what we can to help. Enforcement is at the end of a long chain of other stuff that goes on.”
The committee heard that since November 2023, when the council hired a dedicated empty homes officer, the service had dealt with 55 empty homes, of which 28 were now occupied.
Coun Paul Roberts believes the council needs to move more quickly to get empty homes back into use.
He said: “We’ve got two in our village; 32 years they’ve been empty. I think enforcement needs to get in quicker and do something. Thirty-two years is a long time. We do need to be stronger on it.”
The committee voted to recommend the empty property strategy for approval by Cabinet.
