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Councils urged to action on almost 700,000 empty homes

17th October 2005 | back to article listings BACK    print this article PRINT

Halifax has called on the government to ease the UK's housing shortage by rehabilitating over half a million homes that it says are sitting empty across the country. Drawing on figures released by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) the bank says it has identified 689,675 abandoned homes that could be brought back on to the market.

Many of the empty homes - so called "red field sites" - are located in the north west, where house prices and buy to let rental yields have boomed on the back of a shortage of supply. As much as 8.3 per cent of the local housing stock in Burnley and 7.6 per cent in Liverpool is sitting empty says Halifax.

While the number of empty houses has declined by ten per cent in much of the country as the capital returns on rehabilitation have grown more tempting, the situation in the north west has grown worse with the number of empty homes rising by five per cent.

"While the number of empty homes in England has been trending lower over the past five years, a significant number of properties are still vacant," Tim Crawford, group economist at Halifax, told About Property. "It is in the interest of the whole community to eradicate the empty homes problem."

Bringing derelict houses back into use would boost affordable housing stocks - as most unused property tends to be in cheaper areas - and reduce the strain on temporary accommodation. Tower Hamlets in London has 7.1 per cent of its property sitting empty, while 3.3 per cent of families in the borough are in temporary accommodation.

"What we would like to see is a genuinely sequential approach to housing strategy across the country," said Jonathan Ellis, chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency, a charity who campaign on the issue and who offer advice to owners and buy to let landlords on rehabilitating empty housing stock.

"First of all housing authorities looking at the contribution that red field sites could make - where are the empty properties and how realistic is it to bring them back into use? Then housing authorities would look at the contribution of brown field sites, previously used land, before then finally considering the necessary contribution from green field sites."

The empty homes agency is launching the National Week of Action on Empty Homes this week to highlight the issue and encourage residents to report homes that have been empty for six months or more. Last week the government announced that by 2026 only a third of people in their 30s would be able to get onto the property ladder.

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