The British Property Federation has urged Government to tackle the UK housing crisis by bringing empty homes back to life.

They say that reviving empty homes provides a cheaper alternative to building new ones and that the cost of bringing a house back into use can take as little as £10,000, a fraction of the £100,000 cost of building a new social home from scratch.

BPF state there are currently 762,000 empty homes in England and close to one million in the UK, quoting figures released by the independent charity Empty Homes.

There are 450,000 fewer social homes than a decade ago and 1.7m families languishing on housing waiting lists. This ‘social housing crunch’ has been exacerbated by house building rates falling to their lowest rate since the 1920s, a situation that will be made still worse by a recent £450m cut in the Homes and Communities Agency’s budget.

To solve this, the BPF and Empty Homes are calling for money being made available to renovate homes which could then be reallocated from the HCA’s temporary social housing grants, which are currently only available for new builds.

Government to extend its proposed council tax incentive scheme to cover empty homes, not just new builds.

Liz Peace, chief executive of the BPF, said: “Renovating empty homes is an opportunity for the government to get people of housing waiting lists and into ‘good as new’ homes; it will also save them money in the process.

“Awarding renovation grants will remove eyesores from the local community and rectify lost incomes for the owner and surrounding landlords. It is a win-win situation for the owner of empty properties and the campaign to recycle existing housing stock.

“With the upcoming comprehensive spending review we can expect local authority funding to be cut however the need to supply new homes doesn’t go away, renovating empty homes is a certain way of providing homes.”