No Use Empty success as recycled funds provide solution to bring much-needed housing back to the market

Transcript for the No Use Empty scheme video

[Title card] The video opens with a blurry image of a newly renovated building moving into focus as developer Ryan Fitzpatrick begins to speak out of vision and the camera pans upwards.

[Ryan Fitzpatrick] So this building behind us was an old warehouse building. We’re in Ramsgate at the moment.

[Ryan Fitzpatrick comes into vision. He is standing outside the newly renovated building.]

[Ryan Fitzpatrick] We secured this a couple of years ago now with an option agreement. We took it through planning to convert the building into six apartments.

[While Ryan Fitzpatrick is still speaking the video cuts to old images of how the building used to look before renovation. It shows a dilapidated, dark former work warehouse.]

[Ryan Fitzpatrick] We later went back to put a seventh apartment on the roof as a sort of penthouse style. So I took that through the whole process myself.

[Ryan Fitzpatrick standing outside of the renovated building.]

[Ryan Fitzpatrick] And then we approached Kent County Council for their No Use Empty scheme loan, which was a fantastic facility we used from the start and that’s helped us to fund the purchase and the build of this.

[While Ryan Fitzpatrick is still speaking the video cuts to moving video shots of how the new apartments look now.]

[Ryan Fitzpatrick] Since then we’ve taken half the building down put it back up again redid most of the structure completely fitted it out internally and now we’ve got seven really nice apartments ready to go on the rental market.

[Kent County Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment, Coastal Regeneration and Special Projects, Paul King, outside on the balcony of the top-floor penthouse apartment overlooking Ramsgate.]

[Paul King] I’m such a fan of No Use Empty because it doesn’t cost the council any money number one. It delivers regeneration, it delivers accommodation.

[While Paul King is still speaking the video cuts to moving video shots of how the new apartments look now.]

[Paul King] It delivers jobs. We have about 60 projects on the go at any one time but it’s a recycled pot.

[Paul King outside on the balcony of the top-floor penthouse apartment overlooking Ramsgate.]

[Paul King] So as soon as a development is finished like this one nearly is the funds get released back to us for us to reinvest again. It’s such a simple scheme on the outside but it takes a lot of hard work from Steve Grimshaw and his team to deliver projects like this across the county.

[End card] The Kent County Council logo is on the bottom of the screen with the web address to Kent.gov.uk/news above it. The background is white.