Oligarchs and royalty who keep homes empty in shadow of Grenfell

‘Need wholesale reform’

TYCOONS, foreign royalty and oligarchs are leaving properties empty in the borough where the Grenfell Tower fire left scores homeless.

Owners of the 1,652 unoccupied homes in Kensington and Chelsea include former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who bought a seven-bedroom grade II-listed house for £16million in 2015.

Other properties in the West London borough are owned by a Ukrainian billionaire fighting extradition to the US, a former BBC and ITV executive and a luxury property developer.

Included in the list is the former Brompton Road Tube station, which was once used as a top secret command centre for Winston Churchill.

But it has been left vacant since it was bought for £53million by Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash in 2014.

The names of the high-profile owners of the empty properties were revealed when the council sent a list to recipients including The Guardian newspaper, apparently accidentally. The document includes council tax details for the vacant homes and their 1,197 owners.

It comes after Jeremy Corbyn and senior Labour MPs called for homes in Kensington and Chelsea left empty by overseas investors to be ‘ requisitioned’ for victims of the fire.

Only a dozen families who lived in Grenfell Tower have been reaccommodated. Many are still left in temporary housing.

The day after the disaster Mr Corbyn said: ‘The south part of Kensington is incredibly wealthy, it’s the wealthiest part of the whole country.

‘The ward where this fire took place is, I think, the poorest ward in the whole country and properties must be found, requisitioned if necessary, to make sure those residents do get rehoused locally.’

Some of the luxury properties revealed to be empty are only a few hundred metres from where at least 80 people died in the Grenfell Tower inferno in June.

Peter Fincham, former director of ITV and controller of BBC1, owns an empty £6million vacant property. He said it was ‘in the process of being transferred to a new owner’.

Some were purchased by offshore companies, including Dukes Lodge London Ltd, part of billionaire property developer Christian Candy’s empire. The firm owns 26 homes in a £85million 1930s mansion block.

CPC London, a subsidiary of Mr Candy’s property business, said Duke’s Lodge was undergoing major refurbishment and was ‘currently unsafe and uninhabitable for use’.

Other vacant homes are held by Smech Properties Ltd, which is owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vicepresident of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai.

Over a third of the homes in the borough – 603 in total – are listed as being unoccupied for more than two years. In addition, 1,010 are classified as ‘unoccupied and substantially unfurnished’, with a further 39 left empty for less than a year while building work takes place.

Guy Shrubsole, of the campaign group Who Owns England, told The Guardian: ‘This disclosure shines a light on the need for wholesale reform of Britain’s broken housing market, including increased transparency on ownership.

‘There is a clear public interest in better understanding the issue of empty homes in London’s over-heated property market, why they are being bought and left empty, and where the money is coming from.’

In Nottingdale, the ward of Grenfell Tower, there are 64 homes listed as vacant.

The borough council has made 169 offers of accommodation to Grenfell survivors and 46 were accepted. Only 12 households have so far been rehoused.

Mr Bloomberg did not respond to a request for comment.