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Nearly 2,000 empty homes in Kensington
Almost 2,000 homes in Kensington and Chelsea are currently empty, according to data released by the council under Freedom of Information Act laws.
Figures provided to the blog Who Owns England? show that 1,857 homes in the borough are currently empty.
Of these, 696 have been empty for more than two years and are therefore required to pay 50% extra council tax.
To date only 10 of the 158 families that were evacuated from Grenfell Tower after last month’s deadly fire have been rehoused.
Of 169 offers of accommodation made by the council, only 35 have been accepted by survivors.
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There is a strong correlation between the median house price for a ward in Kensington and the number of empty homes in that ward, according to analysis by Inside Housing.
This will fuel suggestions that the so-called ‘buy to leave’ phenomenon – whereby investors buy properties to leave them empty – is rife in the borough.
A report by Kensington’s housing and property scrutiny committee in 2015 suggested that around 50 homes in the borough had been empty for between 11 and 15 years.
The Brompton and Hans Town ward has 260 empty homes. According to data released by the Land Registry to Private Eye under the Freedom of Information Act, large swathes of this ward are owned by offshore companies.
Kensington and Chelsea has more empty homes – what the government calls “long-term vacants” than any other borough in London, according to figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Those figures, accurate to October 2016, show 1,399 empty properties in Kensington and Chelsea, suggesting a significant increase in the past nine months.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, suggested shortly after the fire that empty luxury homes could be “requisitioned if necessary” to ensure that residents were rehoused locally.
Kensington and Chelsea Council has been contacted for comment.
