Councils are sitting on ‘enough empty property for 19,500 affordable homes’

The organisation, which retrofits vacant council-owned spaces into affordable housing, made the claim at a launch event for its new Empty Spaces to Homes Toolkit, held on Fenchurch Avenue in London's Square Mile on Tuesday (20 June). The figures were revealed by its UK director of development, Tessa Kelly.

According to Habitat for Humanity, an estimated 7,000 local authority-owned commercial and business premises across England, Scotland and Wales had been vacant for more than 12 months as of 2020 (an average of 18 properties per council).

The Empty Homes Network, a research and campaign group of mostly local authority employees who uncovered the data, estimates the spaces could be used ‘to create over 16,000 residential units through the conversion of vacant office space, and 3,500 residential units through the conversion of empty retail space'.

The group fired off 110 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to local authorities (out of a total of 366) to obtain the data, published in a report for Habitat for Humanity.

The councils included every London borough and a random sample of other local authorities, asking them to provide ‘the total number of business and/or commercial premises owned by your local authority, that have been empty or vacant for 12 months or more, and of that number, how many have their primary function as retail space, office space, leisure space or other’.

The network then used data from the large sample size (more than 80 per cent of authorities responded) to estimate the total number of empty properties, and subsequently explored precedents set by charities and organisations ‘who have utilised the opportunities of using empty spaces for housing, and to determine whether models can be replicated in areas with high demand and vacancy rates’.

Habitat for Humanity aims to make its retrofit model for creating new homes from empty properties readily available to 'charities, community groups, and local government partners who are struggling to find decent affordable housing' across the UK.

Its new digital toolkit includes four modules for converting unused buildings into social housing: community engagement, funding, legal guidance, and design and construction, which is broken down into RIBA stages.

Speaking to the AJ at the toolkit launch, a senior leader for Habitat for Humanity's GB team, architect David Clare, explained how the group had already run a successful pilot scheme with Barking and Dagenham council renovating vacant first-floor space above high street shops into flats, with the process being led by their in-house design and construction team.

Clare said its system had converted ‘mostly council-owned properties’, which the council leases to a community group in exchange for a small amount of rent, while Habitat for Humanity absorbs the cost of the retrofit.

Also speaking at the event, Bartlett School of Planning associate professor Ben Clifford described the toolkit as a ‘really useful' resource. But he warned that the ‘glut of poor quality conversions’ from office and retail to residential space following deregulation in 2013 and 2015 had ‘given this kind of activity a poor reputation’.

The widening of permitted development rights (PDR) rules, which allowed office-to-resi conversions to bypass the planning process, has been criticised for leading to poor-quality housing, described as ‘creating the slums of the future’.

Clifford said in order to unlock the 'tremendous potential' of the empty spaces on a wider scale, local authorities would need extra help and resourcing in order to 'actually help facilitate people who are interested in conversion', like they do in the Netherlands, as opposed to planning being viewed as a 'barrier' to conversions.

He added: ‘Hopefully, if we do that, we can then think about how planning can help ensure these conversions are the right sort to support the health and wellbeing of future residents.'