A social scientist from The University of Manchester is leading a project to find out why so many houses are left empty in the UK.
Alexandra Albert has initiated The Empty Houses Project to spot national trends in home usage, and to find out how houses might be brought back into use, using crowd-sourced data from the general public. She hopes that their observations will create a clearer picture which can help to abate the UK’s current housing crisis.
600,000 residential homes are thought to be unoccupied in the UK, and current data shows that the North of England tends to have a larger proportion of unused residential properties than the South, with seaside towns most likely to experience the problem. However, this data is based on Government statistics which do not show patterns of houses which are underutilised – such as rarely-used second homes – or merely appear to be empty.
In addition, while the housing market needs some empty properties to function normally, the longer a house is left unoccupied, the more it is likely to deteriorate and therefore cost more to bring back into use.
“The current housing crisis is a concern for policymakers, third sector agencies and charities, as well as individuals and families who cannot get a home”, said Alexandra. “There has been much talk of tangible solutions to an incredibly complex problem which impacts greatly on many lives, but the use of empty homes has not been looked at closely enough.”
“We believe that early intervention can help to ensure that properties do not remain empty for many years. We want the public to record data on the empty houses that they see, and provide us with information that local authorities, charities and other organisations can use to bring vacant houses back into use quickly and easily.”
Government policy is currently focusing on enabling developers to purchase land cheaply to build brand new homes. Alexandra hopes that the project, through identifying the vast amount of empty properties throughout the UK, will highlight a more sustainable approach to the housing crisis.
“As well as being much cheaper and faster to bring existing homes back into use, it is a more sustainable approach. We need to try to solve this problem, rather than simply building new houses on land that isn’t always suitable for development and is often located away from the areas where homes are needed the most.”
To get involved in the project, visit https://emptyhousesproject.wordpress.com, report any empty houses via this form, or email emptyhouses@manchester.ac.uk.
