A council is being urged to look again at a policy on derelict buildings only introduced three years ago
South Holland District Council launched it in 2022, but last week the Performance Monitoring Panel was asked whether to ‘retire’ it.
Councillors heard that the policy hasn’t been as effective as it was set out to be and many of its roles are already being carried out by other parts of the authority.
Brendan Arnold, interim director of finance and S151 officer at the South and East Lincolnshire Partnership Trust, told the meeting: “It’s recommended that this policy is retired. The policy was introduced to address untidy and derelict sites across the district.
“However, it seems to be a duplicate of existing powers within the council. It hasn’t demonstrated any improvement outcomes.”
The policy was hailed as ‘the first of its kind’ when it was launched in September 2022.
It says the council will engage proactively with owners of sites and provide ‘advice and guidance’.
If a building or area is consistently being reported then the council will ‘ramp up’ the process.
The council will also seek to recover any costs incurred in undertaking remedial work where required.
Many members of the Performance Monitoring Panel said that they didn’t want to retire the policy without a working group being established to properly look at its effectiveness.
Coun Andrew Woolf who chaired the meeting, said: “This has caused a lot of concern for me when we’re talking about a policy which is only three years old.
“To retire something so soon really bothers me. There’s a lot of stuff that we need more answers on.
“We need to properly look at this. The only way we can do this is by establishing a task group to understand what’s not working.”
Coun Paul Barnes said there were still many derelict sites in the district which still need improving.
“There was a reason for this policy three years ago and I don’t think that has changed.
“There are many unsightly properties across the district and I believe that something needs to be done about them.
“Some of the shops in Spalding aren’t too bad but if you go to Holbeach some of the shops there look terrible.
“I’m not comfortable with just chucking this policy in the bin at this present time.”
Coun Margaret Geaney added: “I think we need to look at the policy first. We need to sort out properties which are derelict across South Holland.”
