In London, Long-Term Empty Homes Have Nearly Doubled Since 2016
.By Jack Portman 21 November 2024
London is the only region in England to have experienced increases in residential vacancy every year since 2016, and it has done so while in the midst of an affordable housing shortage and while more and more households have been forced into temporary accommodation. As housing prices and rents have risen steadily throughout the capital, so have the number of homes which have remained unfurnished and empty for longer than six months. Recently released council tax data shows that the number of long-term empty homes across the city rose once again in 2024, while London boroughs struggled to find suitable accommodation for record numbers of homeless families.
According to this year’s data, the number of long-term empty homes in London increased to over 38,000, marking an uptick of 6% over the previous year's total. The number of long-term empty homes reported across London boroughs, now coming to 1 in every 44 homes, has nearly doubled since 2016, when England’s most recent national Empty Homes Programme ended. This is a staggering shift in housing stock in any context, but bearing in mind the particular intensity of London’s housing and affordability issues, the loss of nearly 20,000 homes in only 8 years boldly underscores the importance of bringing forth a new Empty Homes Programme.
London’s 93% increase in the number of long-term empty homes since 2016 draws attention to the deeply rooted issues driving vacancy across the capital, ranging from insufficient local authority planning powers to prioritise primary residential use in new housing developments, to the inability of Empty Dwelling Management Orders to serve as effective tools for councils to bring existing long-term empty stock back into use. London has seen unparalleled financial investment in new-build housing development over the past decade, however research conducted by Action on Empty Homes has shown that this investment has actually worsened the city’s housing crisis by yielding swaths of unaffordable dwellings which have in turn driven up house prices and rents locally.
London councils have been vastly ill equipped to deal with the outpouring of international capital reshaping and repurposing the city’s housing stock, and consequently new powers must be granted in order to better regulate development and better incentivise empty home owners to return their properties to use. Additional targeted funds will be needed to finance the administrative and on-site workload of returning empty homes to use, but this investment can be expected to return as the expansion of council-owned housing stock reduces the need for expenditure on temporary accommodation, which in 2024 reached £4 million daily across London boroughs.
The National Empty Homes Programme, which existed under the coalition government between 2012-15, made funding available for councils and communities to bring empty properties back into use as affordable housing, and could serve as a guide for enabling local action on empty homes. In 2014, empty homes reached a ten-year low in England, and over the course of the programme up to 100,000 long-term empty homes were returned to use across the country.
No other region in England has come close to London’s year-on-year surge in long-term empty homes since the end of the National Empty Homes Programme, with East England posting the second largest increase of 69% since 2016. In 2024, London’s 6% vacancy increase was tied with the Southeast region and came second only to East England, which posted the highest increase nationally of 8% on the year.
In 2024, increases in long-term empty homes were mostly concentrated in outer London, with northern and eastern boroughs generally faring worse. Many councils in south London, including Southwark, Sutton, Lewisham, and Merton, reduced their long-term empty homes figures markedly (although in Lewisham these reductions were matched by similar increases in the number of second homes not in residential use). Western councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham and Brent also saw meaningful reductions in their long-term empty homes, suggesting that councils are taking the empty homes crisis seriously and finding effective ways to respond.
Although the rate of growth of long-term empty homes has actually fallen below pre-pandemic levels, the total number continues to rise, suggesting that the city’s housing stock has not recovered the substantial numbers of homes which went out of use during the tumultuous 2019-20 period. Despite reports of an acute shortage of homes across London, total vacancy has now reached a 15 year high, further supporting the importance of a renewed National Empty Homes Programme which could play a crucial role in quickly mitigating England’s affordable housing shortfall.
The findings emerging from the 2024 council tax data exemplify the need for approaches to relieving housing affordability pressures across London that don’t hinge on large newbuild targets, especially when it is clear that councils are under-equipped to ensure new-builds are priced appropriately for, and made accessible to, local residents. Without a renewed national programme and further powers invested in local authorities, London’s housing stock will continue to be carved out by vacancy at the same time as rent and house prices surge and increasingly more households find themselves homeless and in temporary accommodations.