Thousands of homes sitting empty for months across Surrey
It has risen sharply by 26 per cent on the year before.
Woking has over 400 properties that have sat empty for at least six months, while around 1,100 people are waiting for a suitable home on the council’s housing register.
There are presently 429 long-term vacant homes in the borough, according to Woking Borough Council (WBC), although 51 of these are in the Sheerwater regeneration area marked for demolition.
WBC councillor Deborah Hughes said "the impact of just a proportion of these being returned into the housing stock could make a significant impact to those searching, in particular for a family home", though she appreciated the process was "painstaking".
Surrey as a whole had 5,640 empty homes as of 2020 - a sharp rise of 26 per cent on the year before.
As a proportion of total homes in the borough, 1.07 per cent were last year empty in Woking, while the worst-hit area of the county, Waverley, had 1.51 per cent. This compares with Reigate and Banstead which had the lowest proportion of empty homes, 0.95 per cent.
A breakdown follows: (housing authority, number of long-term empty homes in 2020, empty homes as a percentage in 2020) Source: MHCLG and Action on Empty Homes
Waverley 823 1.51
Runnymede 474 1.27
Tandridge 436 1.17
Spelthorne 504 1.16
Surrey Heath 414 1.11
Mole Valley 417 1.08
Woking 460 1.07
Guildford 616 1.04
Elmbridge 587 1.00
Epsom and Ewell 322 0.99
Reigate and Banstead 587 0.95
"This issue needs to be geared up," said Ilyas Raja, Woking borough councillor for Canalside.
"When people buy these homes and they hold it then there is a shortage of homes in the market and then the price goes up and so the genuine buyer gets affected.
"If owners don’t have reasonable use for these properties then they must either sell it and bring it to the market, or the council should do something about it."
Some properties are empty because they are being renovated, while for others the reasons are said to be more complex, "such as lack of capacity, mental health issues, lack of funds and sentiment attachment to properties", according to a WBC spokesman.
Forty-four of the homes in Woking are from the same private assisted living development.
He said they visit homes reported as empty and contact their owners, referring them to support agencies where appropriate. But national campaign group Action on Empty Homes is calling on Government to give councils more powers to bring empty homes back into use, supported by grants and loans.
In October Woking’s housing team wrote to 306 properties believed to have been empty for between six months and two years, and only got a response from 29%.
It emerged that 43 properties were not in fact empty, and so should have been paying council tax.
Council staff had been redirected from working on empty homes, first to work on Sheerwater and then to assist with the impacts of Covid-19.
Louise Strongitharm, housing director at WBC, said staff were redeployed to running the Travelodge as they had to take over the whole hotel at the start of the pandemic.
She said issues of hoarding were also difficult to deal with under lockdown. "The team have to work very closely with people in the home to try and clear out stuff in a very gentle and sympathetic way, and obviously that isn’t practical under the current situation," she said.
Woking borough councillor Melanie Whitehand said: "We’ve got one in Knaphill that’s been empty for, must be eight to ten years, but it’s been a devil’s own job to try and track down the owner.
"And then the owner had some mental health issues, so correspondence came to a bit of a standstill because of the delicate situation."
As a disincentive to keeping a home empty, WBC like many authorities charges double the amount of council tax for a property unfurnished for two years or more. And after five years, it triples.
However there is a council tax exemption while waiting for probate, which is the case for 35 of the 429 homes currently empty.
Debbie Harlow, also a councillor for Knaphill, and WBC’s portfolio holder for housing, said: "Out of 54 flats I’ve got 10 empty, and that’s just in one block,"she said.
"This is from people dying and when it becomes in probate...there’s very little that we can do to get that property being used again."
Any residents aware of an empty home should report it to their ward councillor.