Mr. John McCarthy:

The turnaround time can vary quite a bit from the very straightforward to situations where the property is boarded up as part of a bigger regeneration programme. Looking at the average time taken across the country, in 2012, the average time was approximately 19 weeks.

What I would say is that as part of the process of establishing the new national oversight and audit commission, one of the areas of work it will take forward very specifically is this performance agenda within local government, both to report on performance but perhaps more important, to try to get best practice in one local authority replicated in other local authorities so that we bring up the performance of the sector generally.