At yesterday’s meeting of the Social Care, Health and Housing scrutiny committee (see also below), Councillor Tony Taylor (SDP, Aberavon) and I questioned the absence of figures relating to unoccupied property and action taken by the local authority to bring it back into use. This is a new indicator in reports to members required by the Welsh Government, but it is something which I intended to bring up in due course anyway. As I indicated at the meeting, the public are offended by the sight of long-abandoned houses, especially in this time of shortage of affordable homes.

It seems that the authority has not kept data under this specific heading up until now, and they will have to be teased out from council tax records. We expect to have them by 30th March next year at the latest.

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