Mr. John O'Connor:

One point we are extremely keen on is to get houses in towns and villages back into use. The Housing Agency would be very supportive of and would assist any local authority that wanted to do that. The committee should look at how we incentivise not only the housing that is needed but also the revitalisation of villages. With falling household size, it is probably more important that people move back into villages, and we think it is a very manageable thing to do.

In addition to the figures coming from the CSO, we note that what other countries have done in regard to vacant properties, with local authorities and agencies like ours, is to identify all the vacant properties and the reasons they are vacant. Of the vacant properties, there are some that might not be available because people own them and they do not want to sell. However, there are many properties that are vacant for various reasons, and one would be surprised how many can be put back into use. England has been addressing this issue for years because, perhaps, it does not build enough housing.

The number of houses throughout England that are vacant for more than six months is 200,000. They have a national housing stock of 23.5 million homes and 200,000 of those have been vacant for more than six months. They have been actively surveying them and identifying all the different issues as to why they are vacant. We have ideas about how what they have done can be used here.