Councils ‘deliberately leaving houses vacant’

Councils are deliberately leaving local authority houses vacant for long periods to qualify for particular Department of Housing funding schemes, a local authority watchdog has claimed.

The National Oversight and Audit Commission said it appeared local authorities were waiting to obtain finance from central government programmes rather than use their own resources to refurbish vacant homes.

The warning comes as a new report by the commission revealed that 2,250 out of 4,202 local authority housing units that were empty at the end of 2015 had been vacant for over a year.