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3,000 HOMES ARE SITTING EMPTY
‘It’s an outrage’: Families face overcrowding as properties go unused
HOUSING waiting lists would be cut by a third if all homes lying empty across Westminster were filled, the West End Extra can reveal.
An investigation into the scale of vacant properties found that nearly 3,000 in the borough are unused.
Details of the empty homes were obtained by this newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The revelation has piled pressure on City Hall to do more to encourage landlords to make better use of their portfolios.
The West End Extra was handed the addresses of 2,997 privately owned vacant properties, showing that some stand empty despite being located in some of the most expensive and desirable parts of London.
Among them are more than 20 properties in Eaton Square, Belgravia, and a handful of famous addresses marked by blue plaque tributes, including the Soho residence of the inventor of the television, John Logie Baird, and the Marylebone house where Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle lived.
?Westminster has 10,000 people waiting for a council home – some for up to five years – and the latest list follows another strand of the West End Extra’s inquires which revealed that 300 council houses are boarded up.
The size of the lists have been branded an “outrage” by Regent’s Park and Westminster North MP Karen Buck. Figures released this week confirmed Westminster as second only to Camden for the number of households living in cramped conditions.
Around 30 per cent in Westminster are defined as overcrowded.
The recession-hit property market, absentee overseas landlords and the disproportionate number of second homes explain the empty homes phenomenon.
Housing bosses say they have invested money in a grants scheme to encourage private landlords to transform rundown properties in return for renting them out to people in need of affordable housing.
Ms Buck said: “It’s not surprising but it is shocking. It’s an outrage when there are thousands of families living in overcrowded conditions and the waiting list is so long. Obviously there isn’t a direct link between the figure and the waiting list, but when the council is at the sharp end of the problem, it should be doing more.”
Westminster’s Conservative housing chief Councillor Philippa Roe said: “This year we expect to award over £500,000 in grants to private landlords to transform rundown properties in return for them renting these homes to people in need of affordable housing.” |
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