I have commented in earlier posts that reports of numbers of vacant homes in England and Wales vary between 390,000 and 580,000, dependant on how those numbers are reported by individual local authorities. If vacant private properties are taken into account, the number rises to 900,000 homes. Houses deemed to be beyond repair are not included in these numbers.

It seems that as many as 65-80% of these numbers are deemed to be long-term empty.

Whilst I am uncertain if there are accurate numbers for the demand side for affordable housing (ie how many affordable homes are needed), this un-inhabited portion of the housing stock is both substantial and unacceptably high.

There are several pieces of legislation in place where the intent is to reduce the numbers of un-inhabited housing units, but it may the case that their ineffectiveness is measured by the persistently large numbers.

The need for larger densities therefore may be significantly reduced by any number of effective mitigation measures that would result in bringing these long term un-occupied homes back into use.

Reports in recent days that 1.5m home owners have second homes (I believe this number does not include buy-to-let properties) cannot be viewed to be beneficial. This especially if these properties do not have occupancy rates that are particularly high on an annualised basis, that is if they are occupied only for a small portion of the year

On the issue of mis-placed adherence to local policies that delivers a huge surplus of retail units in our own borough, some of that floor space could be beneficially re-designated as housing stock, providing at least a small contribution to the overall problem.

This post was last modified: 22-10-2012 09:59 PM by jgdoherty.