Time to demolish unwanted terraced homes

On behalf of many landlords living and working in Burnley, I would like to support the call for Burnley Council to find the appropriate finance and accept some responsibility to compulsorily purchase, demolish and landscape or help contractors redevelop those areas that have, for many years, had a large number of unused and unwanted terraced houses.

Private owners and landlords don’t want to buy these properties and many potential tenants (particularly those who are privately funded) don’t want to live in them, even when they have been refurbished!

It’s time the council stopped blaming private owners and landlords for this general decline and face the truth, rather than forcing private landlords to finance, by hundreds of thousands of pounds, yet more good landlords schemes, which mainly only help to finance wages for council staff and their overheads.

One current good landlord scheme has already been running for five years and is about to be renewed again in Trinity Ward and has done little to increase demand and the value for these old-fashioned and mainly unwanted properties.

The people of Burnley have already voted with their feet. They don’t want to own these properties or live in them, so they remain on the whole a depreciating asset and a blot on the landscape that can still be found on sale for £15,000 or less!

If the council can find the funding to help refurbish the Weavers’ Triangle, for example, then compulsory purchase of a few hundred terraced houses should be achievable now please, to lift these areas into the 21st Century and at last add value to the remaining properties in these run-down areas.

Burnley landlord