ROOF Blog

One million homes are expected to be empty in the UK this year, despite 1.8 million Britons being on the waiting list for social housing. In 2008, there were more empty properties in the north-west of England than anywhere else in the country, with 129,073 houses lying vacant, says the charity the Empty Homes Agency. It is not illegal to leave a property empty, but the government has various ways to discourage it. Where the owner ignores calls to put the property to use, a local authority can make a compulsory purchase order under Housing Act powers. This means it will buy the property at the market rate and sell it on again or convert it into social housing. At the same time, however, the law encourages the practice of leaving properties empty by offering a council tax exemption on any dwellings that are vacant for up to six months.

A new website has launched showing how people can work together to legally borrow empty properties from their owners and return them to use. The site shows how to get hold of and borrow the empty properties from the owners, and where to go for funding, how to arrange repairs and how to turn renovating a property into a training opportunity.

Squatters have taken over the home of married Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen, who have recently come under fire for claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds in expenses on a second home located a few miles away. The squatters said they moved in after a neighbour said the house had been empty for more than a year, and say they have the support of local residents. The BBC say they have obtained a letter from the local council telling the couple that ‘urgent action’ is required from them to explain why their main house is unoccupied.

Figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats have revealed almost 30,000 social homes are being left empty for more than six months, despite the 1.77 million families waiting for social housing. The Lib Dems have been calling on the government to cut VAT on repair works to make it cheaper to bring empty homes back into use. Recent Communities and Local Government figures indicate that there are 327,857 long term empty properties in England.

The government has admitted its house building target of three million affordable new homes by 2020 is in trouble. Margaret Beckett said the government needed to look at ways to put the programme ‘back on track’ once the economic downturn had come to an end, but added that it was doing what it could to help the building industry. Housing bodies are calling for the government to do more, including investing in empty homes.

A £22 million investment package aimed at renovating empty buildings across London has been unveiled by Boris Johnson. The London mayor had pledged to ensure that no more than 1 per cent of London’s housing stock is empty for more than six months, and has committed £39 million, with a further £21 million next year, to bring empty homes back into use.

Homes and Communities Agency is looking at how it could contribute more towards bringing empty homes back into use, using part of its £8.4 billion affordable housing budget. However, it has warned that it could not bring all 700,000 empty homes back into use because homes would have to be of the right type and in the right place.

Council leaders have written to the chancellor calling for VAT to be slashed on long-term empty homes to bring the estimated 300,000 properties back into use. The Local Government Association wants the standard rate of VAT brought down to 5 per cent on the refurbishment of homes empty for six months, rather than the current two years.

Housing minister Margaret Beckett has announced that councils will be given more support to help them bring empty homes back into use. New guidance is being published with the Empty Homes Agency and is expected to strengthen the powers local authorities have to deal with the problem – including encouraging local authorities to use empty dwelling management orders and increasing pressure on owners to bring their empty properties back into use.

Junior housing minister Iain Wright revealed in parliamentary questions that empty dwelling management orders (EDMOs), used to bring empty homes back into use, have only been issued 17 times since their introduction in the Housing Act 2006. Mr Wright claimed that local authorities said the threat of an EDMO was usually sufficient to make owners take action and he was confident that the legislation was beginning to work well. However, the Empty Homes Agency argues that this number is small considering the amount of empty homes in England.