Localism Bill

My Lords, I am not at all sure that this is the right solution to the problem but I am sure the problem is there and I very much hope this Bill will deal with it. When one is looking at the application of localism to urban environments and to giving local communities some degree of control and influence over what is happening, one of the great problems—certainly a problem in the bit of London I lodge in during the week which is Lavender Hill—is empty properties. They are principally retail properties where the owners appear to have decided that they would rather they went empty than accept a lower rent and have some kind of commercial activity within them. My view is that these owners should pay the full cost they are inflicting on the community by following that course of action. By allowing the street to appear derelict and empty they reduce the trade for other businesses. They reduce the prosperity of the area. They reduce the opportunity for jobs for people who live in the area. It is a thoroughly delinquent behaviour. It is something that costs the rest of the community dear. I do not believe that the current arrangements that merely allow for an ordinary empty rate are at all satisfactory. If we are going to have in the future the opportunity to create a neighbourhood in Lavender Hill, one of the first things we will wish to tackle is all the empty shops. We will not wish to do it by trying to persuade people to pay the vast rents which the street used to be able to command in the days when it was prosperous which was now some long while ago—it was 10 or 15 years ago. Some of these properties have stood empty since then. We will need some way of battening on to these landlords and making them realise that although it is their property and theirs to do what they do with it, if they choose to leave it empty and derelict they should pay the community something in respect of the costs they are causing it by their actions. I beg to move.