New research has revealed the number of unoccupied residential properties in the UK.
A Freedom of Information request to all UK local councils asked about the number of empty buildings as of September and found there were 617,527, of which 445,310 were residential properties and 172,217 were commercial.
Liverpool City Council had the most, recording 11,073 empty residential properties, followed by Manchester with 10,531.
Bradford has the highest number of commercial properties currently empty, with 7,908 business premises currently unoccupied,
The research was conducted by Glide, which helps arrange broadband and energy services in the rental, student accommodation and Build to Rent sector.
Jason Lloyd, head of residential at Glide, said: “The research has revealed the high number of empty properties and businesses across the UK, particularly across some of the major northern council areas.”
He described the research as troubling.
| Empty commercial properties | Total | |||
| Local authority | Empty residential properties | |||
| 1 | Birmingham City Council | 8086 | 7622 | 15,708 |
| 2 | Liverpool City Council | 11073 | 4266 | 15,339 |
| 3 | Manchester City Council | 10531 | 4003 | 14,534 |
| 4 | Leeds City Council | 8331 | 4528 | 12,859 |
| 5 | Bradford Metropolitan Council | 2610 | 7908 | 10,518 |
| 6 | Durham County Council | 7330 | 1573 | 8,903 |
| 7 | Bristol City Council | 6403 | 1742 | 8,145 |
| 8 | Cheshire West and Chester | 5860 | 1897 | 7,757 |
| 9 | Sheffield City Council | 5063 | 2610 | 7,673 |
| 10 | Cornwall Council | 5795 | 1662 | 7,457 |
Comments (2)
I suspect some may be empty as they are not ‘habitable’ according to specialists, and the owner does not have the money to make the improvements and cannot off-load them for financial reasons. Even though the reasons that they may have failed the checks are not actually reasons that most people would class as making it uninhabitable!
Hey, why doesn’t Shelter look at purchasing them (for a fair price) and doing them up to rent out (at below market rate, obvs) to homeless people?
More useless information. Without a full understanding as to why and how long properties are empty or not used the statistics mean nothing. Other than to A certain so called charity who can use and manipulate them to for political purposes.