Empty council homes to be sold and brought back to life

New measures have been put in place to fight the housing shortage in London.

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, has urged town halls across the capital to list their property stocks by April 2015, in order to sell all those empty homes worth more than £1million.

The move would allow the councils to sell the expensive vacant buildings and therefore reinvest the money into new homes for hundreds of families who are currently on the waiting list for the social housing.

Details of the high-priced properties are expected to be published by postcode, in order to keep track of the value of the buildings in different parts of the city.

Mr Pickles has taken the chance to emphasize Southwark council’s empty homes initiative. Last October, in fact, the borough has sold one four-story building for £3million, in order to fund the construction of twenty new homes.

Good news come from the property experts, who have announced most of the inhabited social housing in the capital are worth over £1million and on top of that, hundreds of them are available.

While the Government is willing to seriously invest in social projects, independent charity Empty Homes has been working hard since 1992, to bring empty homes back into use.

Their 2013 report clearly shows the results of consistent campaigning activities during the previous year, when they obtained pledges to get 182 empty homes into use all over the UK.