Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Shocking figures reveal number of empty homes in city
NEW RESEARCH SHOWS 87,731 HOMES STAND EMPTY IN LONDON’S 32 BOROUGHS
THE shocking amount of empty houses in London has been revealed as new research has shown that £130bn worth of residential property is unused within the capital.
There are 87,731 vacant homes within the 32 boroughs and, shockingly, there is one borough which has over 4,900 empty homes.
Southwark in South London has the most vacant dwellings in the capital and tops the list with 4,976 properties which aren’t being lived in. This includes council homes, those managed by housing associations and private rented properties.
As of the end of 2021, Southwark Council owned 1,211 of these vacant homes while housing associations owned 148.
Meanwhile as of March 2022, there were around 16,000 households on the waiting list for a home in Southwark.
Close behind Southwark was Camden which came second with 4,771 empty homes in the borough. Finishing off with third place Newham, with 4,283 vacant dwellings.
The data comes from CIA Insurance which used information from the government’s vacant dwelling list. On here, each borough and the amount of empty houses within them is calculated and listed.
The last complete set of data was based on those homes which were vacant at the end of 2021.
Southwark Council drew up an ‘empty homes policy’ in October 2021. The action plan sets out the authority’s “zero tolerance approach” to long-term empty homes and lays out measures to bring them quickly back into use.
As part of this plan, Southwark Council says “we will work closely with our residents and property owners while taking firm action where required”.
Like Southwark, Camden has a similar policy and on its website it states: “There is a very high demand for housing in Camden, yet there are privately owned properties that are empty across the borough.
“We are doing all we can to encourage owners to bring empty homes back into use.”
Vacant dwellings are published by the government each year. The top of the list includes areas with thousands of empty homes but down the bottom are those keeping the number below 1,000. The borough of Wandsworth had 977 empty homes at the end of the year while Hammersmith and Fulham had 1,010.
However, despite some boroughs having thousands of people on social housing waiting lists, the capital actually has a surplus of homes.
Currently, demand isn’t there for all the houses on offer and councils only own a proportion of vacant
homes in the area so they can’t be filled by those who most need them.
With London being the most expensive place to buy property in the UK, it may be hard for the 87,000 empty homes, many of which are private rented, to be filled.