Unlocking the Potential of Empty Homes

The Mayor and Liverpool City councillors are cursing Eric Pickles for suspending their decision to demolish the Welsh Streets. Pickles won’t care about their curses of course, the fact that this is the third time ministers have directly intervened in...

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Liverpool council’s planning committee decision to demolish most of the Welsh Streets and replace it with a far smaller number of larger suburban housing association homes is the latest chapter in the managed decline of one of Britain’s great cities...

Whatever else you might heave heard; this much is true; bringing empty homes into use won’t solve the housing supply crisis by itself.  But that’s no reason not do it. It’s equally clear that the current rate of house-building isn’t going to solve it...

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The number of empty homes in England is set to drop to zero next year. This may sound improbable, but if you follow current projections of house building rates and household formations it must be true.
Government projections show the number of households in England growing to 27.5 million by 2033. In 2011, the year of the last census, the official statistics showed a surplus of 750,000 dwellings. In other words there were three quarters of a million...