Lease of Life for Empty Homes

A new project being developed by Clean Slate and its partners DHI to offer work opportunities to long-term unemployment was profiled on BBC Points West on 5 December.

The Handy Help scheme has recruited 6 long-term unemployed people and trained them in 'handyman' skills to provide householders with support on house and garden clearance, removals and basic painting and decorating. This week, as part of Empty Homes Week, the team was contracted by Bath & North East Somerset council to help bring a property in Saltford back into use and available to people in housing need in the area.

See the Points West item here (forward to 14 mins and 5 secs).

Jeff Mitchell, Managing Director of Clean Slate, said: "We have supported the Bath & North East Somerset homelessness strategy for many years and our major focus has been to provide homeless and other excluded people with paid work opportunities, so they can help themselves to improve their circumstances. We've been talking about creating these kind of work opportunities since we published our report on the aspirations of workless people in 2009 and put the wheels in motion earlier this year. When B&NES council asked us to get involved with bringing empty homes into use, it was a fantastic opportunity to attack homelessness on two fronts at once." (See Clean Slate's report Aspiring to More here)

Trainees on the Handy Help programme are on training at Bath City Farm and have joined Clean Slate's pool of Temp Workers, available for more of this type of work in future. A new social enterprise, run jointly by Clean Slate and DHI, will be formally launched in 2012 offering services to householders around Bath & North East Somerset.

ITV also covered the story, looking at the empty homes situation across the West of England. See it here.

Channel 4 is this week running a series of programmes about empty homes called 'The Great British Property Scandal'. It kicked off with architect and TV presenter George Clarke embarking on 'on a crusade to tackle Britain's housing crisis.' See it here.

Posted on 6th December 2011 by Jeff Mitchell