6.8K homes lay empty in Southwark while thousands more are on the housing waiting list

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

More than 6,800 homes are standing empty in a borough where more than 16,500 people are waiting for a council house.

A year after Southwark council pledged to take a “zero tolerance approach” to empty private homes, figures show 6,874 homes in the borough have nobody living there.

A total of 1,714 council-owned properties are also lying empty – more than there were in 2021. Last year, over 7,700 homes across Southwark had no-one living in them – 6,275 of them privately owned.

Speaking at a housing scrutiny meeting on Monday, Perry Singh, strategy and business support manager at Southwark council, said: “In terms of our private sector empties, they’ve gone down by 1,000.

“That’s the really good news. The bad news is that our council voids have gone up. That is almost exclusively down to the inactive voids, which are the regeneration voids and the refurbishment voids.” 

Singh said that many of the empty council-owned homes were in the remaining sections of the Aylesbury estate in Walworth, which are due to be demolished in the coming years.

Council properties that have had to be emptied due to fire safety issues like Marie Curie House in Camberwell were also contributing to the number, Mr Singh added. 

Southwark council has said people who leave their homes unoccupied for two years or more must pay 100 per cent extra council tax.

Those who leave them empty for between five and 10 years are slapped with a 200 per cent premium. A 300 per cent council tax premium is put on homes empty for over a decade. 

But the council also offers owners of empty properties generous grants and loans to help them bring the homes back into use. People wanting to refurbish their empty home so people can live there again can get a loan of up to £70,000 to help with costs from the council.

Pictured top: Many of the council-owned empty homes are on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark (Picture: Robert Firth)