Empty council offices could provide up to 20,000 homes in England, MPs have said. An inquiry by a cross-party group of MPs published on Monday said converting empty commercial and business premises into flats could play a significant role in addressing the housing crisis.
But, the MPs warned, standards for so-called “permitted development rights” (PDR) needed to be strengthened to ensure the new homes were fit for people to live in.
Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Ending Homelessness, said: “The report comes against a backdrop of a severe shortage of affordable housing, which is a core driver of homelessness. We have heard from witnesses that there is significant scope to repurpose empty buildings to help ease the housing crisis. Taken together, the recommendations from this inquiry will ensure that conversions are of high quality and contribute to creating places people want to live, rather than making the housing and homelessness crisis worse.”
PDR allows developers to convert former offices and shops into flats without having to apply for planning permission, but such conversions have often been of poor quality, with limited space and access to daylight.
The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) told the MPs’ inquiry: “PDR conversions present the worst face of the current UK housing crisis.”
To address this, the MPs recommended tightening standards by incorporating the TCPA’s “Healthy Homes Principles” into law, with the rules applying to all homes including those created by PDR. The principles have been proposed as an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill currently being debated by the House of Lords, but would need to be approved by MPs as well.
The APPGs suggested other changes, including focusing on converting town centre premises rather than those on out-of-town business and retail parks that lacked amenities or public transport connections, and requiring developers to incorporate affordable homes into their plans. The inquiry, which was carried out by Mr Blackman’s APPG and the APPG for Housing Market and Housing Delivery, pointed to 2021 research by Habitat for Humanity that suggested councils owned 7,000 commercial properties that had been empty for more than a year and could be converted into 20,000 homes.
Privately owned premises could also be converted, with the inquiry saying 7% of office space and 14% of retail units in England were vacant. Northumbria University’s Dr Kevin Muldoon Smith told the inquiry that some premises needed to be kept empty to allow for business expansion, but around 75% of vacant properties could be considered for conversion. The Government has pledged to build 300,000 homes per year, while modelling by the charity Crisis and the National Housing Federation found England needs to build 145,000 affordable homes per year, including 90,000 for social rent.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: "We are investing £11.5billion to deliver the affordable homes this country needs and more than 54,000 affordable homes were started last year thanks to Government-funded schemes. As a result, we are on track to deliver our target of 250,000 homes through the 2016 to 2023 Affordable Homes Programme.
"We expect local councils to support us in delivering affordable homes in their area, by ensuring they identify both sites and empty properties for development."
