A bad day for the world

Takes them forever though. Properties can be literally falling apart before they bother.

dd do you mean the council own the building company? That's a new one on me!

@Ana They can also enforce sale or issue a compulsory purchase order.

Trump doesn't believe in this, either.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37949877

It's a fiendish plot by the Chinese.

@Welshwife

My (Tory) council has found a fiendish way of building council houses. They set up a private company, which borrowed money to buy the council's entire housing stock. Now it can do what it wants, including new buildings.

We have council binmen!!! :-)

The council has also recently brought its housing services and council tax collection departments back in-house after a disastrous experiment with outsourcing. This is a Tory council, so maybe they're beginning to see the light!

Penstemmon, I think most Councils charge the usual Council Tax on unoccupied properties these days. I know mine does (apart from 6 months' grace after probate's granted if the owner dies).

Some info about councils' powers re empty properties:

www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/buying_rescueahouse2.shtml

It was written in 2014 and I don't know if the law has been superceded.

That rings a bell, Penstemmon, although I don't know the details. I have a feeling that councils can take owners of derelict property to court. I know my local council has just cut the council tax exemptions for empty properties to stop developers playing Monopoly with them.

Compulsory purchase could possibly be used - they can insist that people start renovating and do specific things within a time scale when they have left a property for a certain length of time. I know a man along from us who had a house and was just leaving and he was given some ultimatum to do the roof as it was causing problems for the house next door.

Actually I think there is a law that does allow something like that if the owner cannot be traced. If a property is empty for more than 6 months and the owner is not in hospital/prison/care or is renovating the property then no penalty. If however they are simply proft waiting then council tax should be on an increasing sliding scale so it is not financially beneficial to 'sit' on properties.

rosesthey will have kept within the % allowed b4 gov.cap kicks in. Will it cover rising cost of services do u think? Or will there be more jobs lost?

But Welshwife even if Councils had the money they can't just barge in and renovate privately-owned property.

Councils are now allowed to increase Council tax ( ours has.)

Any sort of housing Jess you can see empty dwellings in all sorts of places - I have seen reports saying there are a million empty homes UK but have no idea if that is a guess or proper statistics.

Not sure which empty houses you're referring to Welshwife or where? And do you man council houses or privately owned?
The council here use private companies these days to do renovations and repairs on their housing stock. One of the effects of the austerity/"rolling back the state" has been that councils now have far fewer staff on their books. I bet not many of us have "council" bin men any more for instance. All been outsourced to Biffa, Serco etc. This change has been happening for a while now - it cuts costs because the cost of employing a full time workforce on good pay and conditions (including pensions) is high. The losers are the people who no longer have these secure jobs or the opportunity to get them.
At least the repair and maintenance contracts seem to go to local firms here.

Councils do not have much money anymore because they are not able to increase local taxes or they lose more money from central government. Most people do want good local services but many do not want to pay the going rate to get them.
Also school budgets and their support services are almost at breaking point.

Skilled workers like builders, electricians, plumbers, etc cost money. Councils don't have money. At least not enough.

Or so they keep saying.

There are a lot of money-wasting, lit up, useless road signs (saying things like "Drive safely in Argyll and Bute") around here. Why has the council spent money on non-essential stuff like that?

The U.K. Has a great shortages of housing and this has been progressively worse since the right to buy and then councils not being allowed to use the money to build more. But what I cannot understand is why we still have so many empty houses which could be renovated and let by the councils. When I was a child the local councils all had a team of maintenance men and many had building trade skills so all jobs could be tackled. A team of renovating builder would not be too difficult to put together surely then the councils would be getting the work done at a reasonable cost. I realise some of these empty houses will be in low employment areas and so not in demand but older or maybe non working people would be glad of them.

alongside leaving the EU, these problems have been given a good old airing, and I hope that whatever government we have from both political parties will do something about it.At the moment it's the Conservatives, and likely to be so for a good while.

to spell it out for you Djen
the voting system works well and doesn't need changing.Any other way would allow in a rag bag of coalition every GE.Sometimes a Party [a single Party} needs to be in control to actually get things done.]
Second point; no political Party for a long time has taken any notice of their own citizens concerns for all sorts of things, particularly workers from EU countries coming in which in some areas has caused real problems on housing, doctors and schools.No one can deny these problems exist.
Plus a lack of social housing and outsourcing almost all manufacturing.
Both Labour and Conservative governments have addressed other problems in society, but all rumblings and grumblings from people regarding the problems I have mentioned have just been swept aside with arrogance.

Every time Trump is interviewed on immigrants he is giving support to UKIP

May won't let Farage be middleman. At least she shows some sense there.

He's apparently going to have Obama advising him too, at least for a little while, because apparently he's clueless about how the White House works.

Why are people worried. I mean, he has Farage advising him, hasn't he#what'snottolike