State Intervention in Vacant Residential Properties: An Evaluation of Empty Dwelling Management Orders in England

Abstract

State intervention in empty properties strengthened in England during the 2000s. Reasons included housing need, planning dilemmas, and a policy discourse associating vacant properties with wasted resources. Empty dwelling management orders (EDMOs) were adopted to enable local authority management of empty properties, with associated legislation endeavouring to uphold the rights of different interests and tasking a tribunal with approval. EDMOs nevertheless proved controversial, leading to adopted policy changes. Drawing on case transcripts and a conceptualisation of the abstract spaces of tribunals, recent EDMO applications are examined to investigate applications submitted and the basis for judgments reached. The paper acknowledges that behind notions of disinterested property owners were a diversity of lived situations, and that, in contrast to prevailing statements about heavy handedness, alternative implementation perspectives were evident, including a limited number of applications and approaches that were both considered and supportive. Not without broader relevance, the basis for policy (re)formulation must be carefully examined because of the potential for such disjuncture to exist.