A GOVERNMENT minister has put his weight behind Salford's fight to get rid of empty houses which are blighting the city's streets.

Housing minister Jeff Rooker gave his support to Salford City Council's plans to deal with the problem.

His praise for the council came after city bosses' proposals for a voluntary leasing programme was highlighted at a national conference for stamping out blighted houses across the country.

The council has asked Whitehall for the power to carry out the scheme, which will allow them to force property owners to allow empty buildings to be leased out by a third party.

The council has developed a pilot scheme, which could be introduced on a voluntary basis across Greater Manchester.

The minister said: "We cannot tolerate homes without people if there are people without homes. Breathing new life into existing buildings means improving the local environment, which is often damaged by the presence of eyesore empties.

"Pioneering ideas like voluntary leasing, used by Salford in a low demand area, show that leasing schemes have the potential to make serious in-roads into the problem of dilapidated housing."

Salford housing boss Cllr John Warmisham said: "We have worked closely with the empty homes agency on developing a ground-breaking approach to this issue.

"We have made the removal of empty homes a high priority for our city. We believe there may be around 5,000 empty homes in Salford, so we want to develop and introduce a compulsory leasing scheme to help us reduce that number substantially.

"At the moment we simply don't have the powers to do this, but we believe we have a voluntary scheme which gives us a way of operating now. We have also produced a discussion paper to help generate further discussion nationally.

"Government tells us this is what it will base national guidance on should it proceed with a pilot scheme nationally This is a critical issue for us, and one on which we want much clearer guidance from central government."