Don’t Knock Them Down – Give Them Away

Independent charity Empty Homes is urging councils to give away empty houses instead of knocking them down. £70m of public money has been earmarked for demolishing over 5,000 homes, with little prospect of them being replaced. Thirteen councils have been awarded £35.5m in match funded government grants (through the Housing Market Renewal Transition Fund) to wind up their Housing Market renewal programmes. Empty Homes has discovered through the Freedom of Information Act,that councils intend to use virtually all of this money to knock down empty homes and buy up more houses in order to demolish them. In total the councils intend to demolish 5,125 homes. In the majority of cases the proposals make clear that there are no imminent plans to replace the houses, and the cleared sites are set to be grassed over or used as informal car parks. Read more on the Empty Homes website.