Housing Crisis or poor housing management?

In the UK, the latest statistics by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) show that for England alone there are over 600,628 empty homes 268,000 of these being classed as long term vacant, which begs the question - is there really a Housing Crisis in the number of properties available, or are we simply not putting empty homes into good use? Shockingly, 25,000 of these properties are LA owned and 8,692 of these are in London with Southwark LA being guilty of 1051 empty properties

Do we need to build quite so many more on protected green space, or simply put what we have into use? Should local authorities dictate where those on a waiting list for a homes in overpopulated areas such London and the SE England be relocated to the many roads of boarded up properties as part of a regeneration plan? These are questions that need to be raised as part of the UK housing plan.

Despite the powers vested in Local Authorities to be able to put empty properties into use by issuing an EDMO (Empty Dwelling Management Order) many councils claim that there is not the financial resource to service this.?

Councils have almost entirely abandoned powers to tackle the rising number of empty homes prompting calls for the legislation to be scrapped and replaced with a scheme local authorities find it easier to use.?

280,000 social rented homes in England sold off between 2012 and 2020, according to the Chartered Institute of Housing. Out of those, 121,000 were sold off under the Right-to-Buy scheme introduced under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government.

Meanwhile 116,000 were converted to higher ‘affordable’ rents, while the rest were demolished.

Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of households in the UK’s private rented sector increased from 2.8million in 2007 to 4.5million. This is a gloomy statistic as there is a mass exodus of Landlords from the PRS due to over taxing and penalising Investor Landlords.

With more than a million households in England stuck on a social hosing waiting list and fewer than 7,000 social homes built last year – the crisis gripping the country is unlikely to vanish any time soon. Yet sometimes the answer is staring them in the face - the problem would be less than half of what is is if vacant properties were filled.