Answer to the supply crisis is lying empty

There was one man, however, who was sorely disappointed by the absence of help for the particular problem he is tasked with tackling: vacant properties.

‘I’m afraid I found nothing,’ said David Ireland, the chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency, at his organisation’s annual conference last week.
‘[I found] a fund to buy up flats from bankrupted builders. A fund to try and get housing associations to try and build more homes. Nothing to address this problem. I feel almost a sense of anger about that.’

The agency estimates that there are 939,000 vacant homes in the UK, a figure which is likely soar past the 1 million mark next year. The sheer scale of the problem is such that more, much more needs to be done to address it, Mr Ireland said.

‘We have got overwhelming vacancies and overwhelming housing need,’ he said. ‘There is something wrong with the housing system that delivers this.’

The agency has a number of ideas about what should be done. These range from allowing short-term occupancy of homes that have been left empty to allow major regeneration schemes to proceed, to holding fire on demolition schemes in market renewal areas until the land is bought up by a developer.

Mr Ireland was also concerned that rising repossession rates would make the empty homes issues even worse.

According to the agency, only 20 per cent of homes repossessed have actually been reoccupied.

One family that contacted the agency exemplified the situation.

‘[Their home was] repossessed earlier this year and they were put in some temporary accommodation they felt wasn’t very satisfactory,’ said Mr Ireland.

‘They saw their house standing there empty [and] they decided to break back in. Nobody seems to have noticed.’

Mr Ireland said the Empty Homes Agency was supposed to be against squatting but in such situations ‘it feels like we are in the wrong’.

Anne Power, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, said her ‘very rough’ calculations suggested that millions of new homes could be provided if all empty housing and buildings were brought back into use.

‘How much can empty buildings offer per se? Let’s say - as [Mr Ireland] says - that empty homes give us an extra 1 million homes.

‘Unwanted commercial property - of unknown capacity - may offer [space for another] 1 million homes. Empty rooms [in under-occupied homes] may offer a further 1 million spaces.

‘[This figure] coincides with what the government needs.’

Professor Power added that more people should be encouraged to subdivide under-occupied homes to provide more space to house people.
She has put her money where her mouth is by subdividing her own property.

‘We turned our single house into three households and cut our energy use by 60 per cent despite extending the number of people threefold,’ Professor Power said.

The government has placed the onus on councils in England to reduce the number of empty homes, according to Terrie Alafat, director of housing and strategy at the Communities and Local Government department.

Ms Alafat said that the government was ‘continuing’ to push for councils to think strategically and make links between housing pressures in their areas and the number of empty homes they have.

‘We do not believe at this point that more legislation is the answer. I think our sense is that local authorities have many powers to bring empty properties back into use.

‘There is always the question about the extent to which existing legislation is being put into practice and if it is not, why not?’

Making the best use of existing homes ‘should be an important element of every local authority strategy’, Ms Alafat said. Residents also had powers to petition councils to bring empty properties back into use, she added.

But whoever takes responsibility for filling unused properties, there was widespread recognition at the conference that empty homes are a sizeable problem.

And with house building slowing and waiting lists soaring, it’s an issue that is beginning to appear increasingly unjust.