The British Property Federation (BPF) has called the 1 million empty homes in the UK a ‘shameful waste’. According to the BPF there are over 4 million people on housing waiting lists in Britain and they believe reviving the current empty homes would provide a good-value solution. Their research has shown that bringing a house back into use can take as little as £10,000, a fraction of the £100,000 cost of building a new social home from scratch. Furthermore, the BPF claims the ‘social housing crunch’ has been exacerbated by a £450m cut in the Homes and Communities Agency’s budget that has caused it to scrap two of its Kickstart housing funding projects, while a drop off in section 106 contributions has also reduced new affordable housing.

Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, said:

“It’s a shameful waste that so many homes are empty while millions of families living in poverty or without permanent housing. Renovating empty homes is an opportunity for the government to get people of housing waiting lists and into ‘good as new’ homes; it will also save them money and reduce the burden off of over-stretched councils at a time when housing benefit is also being slashed. Awarding renovation grants will remove eyesores from the local community and rectify lost incomes for the owner and surrounding landlords. It is a win-win situation for the owner of empty properties and the campaign to recycle existing housing stock. With the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review we can expect local authority funding to be cut further. But housing need will not go away and while there is no silver bullet solution, renovating empty homes is a cheap and useful contribution to a huge problem. It would also tackle some of the problems caused by empty homes, which can attract petty crime, squatters, fly tipping, vandalism and occasionally arson – forcing areas with high numbers of empty homes into a spiral of decline.”