Leeds Empties: An experiment for a big issue
Rob Greenland and Gill Coupland who run Leeds based Social Business Brokers, came up with the idea for Leeds Empties after seeing George Clarke’s Great British Property Scandal programme on Channel 4. Leeds Empties Week launched last week and Rob looks back at what's been achieved.
As I explained last week Leeds Empties was a bit of an experiment – trying out a new way of working which, we hoped, would help us to make more of a difference in Leeds.
The idea was to focus on one issue – and then bring together as wide a range of people as possible to explore a range of ways to tackle that issue. Empty homes was the social problem we picked first.
After a six month pilot, Leeds Empties Week put the spotlight on a few of the ideas we want to develop further over the next twelve months.
The highlight of the week for me was a tour of two empty homes that are currently being refurbished to high environmental standards by Leeds social enterprises.
LATCH, with support from local environmental design co-operative LEDA. Discussion afterwards focused on how we could go from 2 homes to 200 refurbished in this way. The environmental benefits clearly interest us – but it’s the potential for taking people out of fuel poverty that excites us most.
Other events included a breakfast seminar on ways we could get more investment into empty homes – with speakers including Ged Devlin from the Co-ops UK and local social enterprise legal expert Duncan Milwain exploring community share issues and bond issues.
And on Thursday we launched our Empty Homes Doctor service – offering one-to-one support to owners of empty homes, to help them to work out how to bring their home back into use. This is the idea that excites us most – we’re confident that by focusing on the people behind the property we can understand what the problems are – and work out how to help.
Where do we go from here? For the next twelve months our focus is on taking the ideas developed in our six month pilot and turning them into a social business that can bring lots of long term benefits – more decent homes, greener homes, and lots more jobs and training opportunities.
And once we’ve got that up and running in Leeds, we’d like to take the approach to other parts of the UK. Social investors take note…..