Families in England left homeless despite 33,000 empty council homes
Tens of thousands of council houses are currently empty despite the country facing a national housing crisis.
There are 33,993 vacant council properties in England, the highest number since 2009. And Sky News can reveal more than 6,000 publicly-owned homes have been empty for over a year.
They include several residences that have been sealed off on an estate in Lambeth, south London, for more than two decades and 144 flats in a boarded-up tower block in the bordering borough of Southwark that has been empty since 2015. It was due to be redeveloped but building costs have risen so much it’s set to be demolished.
Sky News has worked with housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa to reveal the numbers of vacant council properties by using Freedom of Information requests.
Mr Tweneboa told Sky News: “You’ve got people sleeping on the streets. You’ve got people who are sleeping in garages and storage containers. Yet we’ve got thousands of homes sat empty, council homes up and down the country, which aren’t being used.
“It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a complete dereliction of duty and failure to care for those that need it most.”
Housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa
Instead of repairing houses they own, councils are paying millions each year to private landlords to house families in emergency temporary accommodation, including bed and breakfasts.
The latest figures show 145,800 children in England are homeless and living in temporary accommodation – a record high and 15% more than a year ago.
Rose, 21, lives with her young daughters in a single room in a bed and breakfast in Streatham, Lambeth.
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For Rose – who works part-time as well as studying to be an air controller – private rent in south London is out of the question.
She says she worries constantly about the impact on her daughters, aged five and two, of being homeless.
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Rose’s youngest daughter has only ever known living in a single room with her family
“My firstborn still wears nappies because in the middle of the night she can’t just get up and go to a shared toilet with all these people that she doesn’t know,” she says. “My baby – it took her time to walk because she didn’t have enough room and she couldn’t use the baby walker.”
She calls Croydon Council regularly to find out if she is any closer to being offered a permanent home, but a recent call with a council worker has made her worry.
“She said to me that you will have to move out of London and find a house,” Rose says. “She told me there are no council houses, there’s no social houses, those were her words – we have no social houses.”
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Calls to aid rundown housing estate
Yet a short drive from where Rose is living, we showed her dozens of empty houses.
The houses are on a Lambeth estate that was earmarked for redevelopment several years ago. Despite many of the properties being emptied, there is no sign of any building work.
Rose says the revelation there are empty social homes in London makes her feel “heartbroken, lied to and deceived”.
The Local Government Association (LGA) blames a shortage of funding for councils for the number of vacant properties.
Houses on an estate in Lambeth, south London, have been boarded up
Victor Chamberlain, a housing spokesperson for the LGA, told Sky News that in many cases “the council doesn’t have the money in place to be able to refurbish them and bring them back into use as council homes”.
He said money is instead paid to private landlords for temporary accommodation because councils “have a duty as a local authority to make sure that nobody is sleeping rough or that they don’t have a secure place to sleep each night”.
LGA housing spokesperson Victor Chamberlain
Mr Chamberlain continued: “That means that we have to divert funding to those causes and not to building the new council homes, which are absolutely essential to solving the problem.
“It’s complete mismanagement. You know, there’s a complete false economy.
“If we’re not able to spend the money on the actual solution, but we’re using a sticking plaster of temporary accommodation, then the system is broken.”
Lambeth Council told Sky News: “Lambeth is committed to bringing empty homes back into use as quickly as possible.”
It added: “The majority of our empty properties have been vacant for less than six months.”
Rose plays with her children in their cramped accommodation
We asked Croydon Council why Rose had been told there was no social housing available.
Several days later, it responded: “We have been working with our resident to find more suitable accommodation that meets their needs and have identified a permanent home that we will offer them soon.
“Croydon has been impacted by an increase in homelessness and a London-wide housing shortage.
“Unfortunately, this means that there are not always permanent homes available for families as quickly as we would like.”
Additional reporting by Nick Stylianou, Communities Producer.
An international manhunt is under way for the husband of a murdered woman, whose body was found in the boot of a car.
The body of Harshita Brella was found in east London on Thursday, tens of miles away from her home in Corby.
On Sunday, Northamptonshire Police said they were looking for Pankaj Lamba – who they believe has left the country.
Sky News understands she had been under the protection of a court order designed for victims of domestic abuse.
“Our inquiries lead us to suspect that Harshita was murdered in Northamptonshire earlier this month by her husband Pankaj Lamba,” said chief inspector Paul Cash.
“We suspect Lamba transported Harshita’s body from Northamptonshire to Ilford by car.”
“Fast track” enquires were made after the force was contacted on Wednesday by someone concerned about Ms Brella’s welfare. After she failed to answer the door at her home in Skegness Walk, Corby, a missing person investigation was launched.
Her body was found inside the boot of a vehicle in Brisbane Road in the Ilford in the early hours of Thursday morning.
A post mortem – conducted at Leicester Royal Infirmary on Friday – established she had been murdered.
Harshita Brella, 24, from Corby. Her body was found in a car in east London. Pic: Northamptonshire Police
More than 60 detectives are working on the case, with lines of enquiry including going house to house and property searches, as well as looking at CCTV and ANPR.
“We are of course continuing to appeal for any information that will help us piece together exactly what happened as we work to get justice for Harshita,” said chief inspector Cash.
“I urge anyone listening to or reading this statement, that if you saw anything suspicious in the past week or have any information, no matter how small, please contact us. We would always rather receive well-meaning information that turns out to be nothing as opposed to not receiving it all.”
Pankaj Lamba. Pic: Northamptonshire Police
Force referred to police watchdog
On Saturday, Northamptonshire Police said it had made a mandatory referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct due to previous contact between the force and the victim.
Northamptonshire Police previously said officers had been conducting investigations at three locations: Skegness Walk and Sturton Walk in Corby and Brisbane Road, Ilford, where Ms Brella’s body was found.
East Midlands Special Operations Major Crime Unit (EMSOU) and Northamptonshire Police said they were working “around the clock to establish the circumstances behind her death, including the exact location and timeframe in which it took place”.
State-of-the-art technology has been used to create a voice for King Richard III – giving him a Yorkshire accent.
A digital avatar of the medieval king’s head went on display in front of excited history fans at York Theatre Royal.
Richard III was king of England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, at the age of 32.
His remains were found in a car park in Leicester in 2012 by historian Philippa Langley.
Speaking about the recreation, she said: “We’ve got leading experts in their fields who have been working on this for 10 years and so everything has been meticulously researched, meticulously evidenced, so you are seeing the most accurate portrayal of Richard III”.
A team based at Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University created the avatar based on the reconstruction of Richard III’s head with the help of a craniofacial expert.
His voice has been created by Professor David Crystal, a leading linguist in 15th-century pronunciation. He admitted that it’s impossible to know exactly how he spoke, but this is as close as they will get.
The king was born in Northampton but spent a lot of his life in Yorkshire. His parents were also from the north of England.
Vocal coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm spent a decade researching how the monarch would have sounded. She worked with the actor Thomas Dennis who was chosen as his body and face were such a a good physical match.
Speaking to Sky News, she said people will be shocked at how different he sounded compared with traditional portrayals of the king on stage and screen.
The coach and actor also examined the king’s letters and diary so that “as you pronounced a word that’s how you would write it”.
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The voice shows the change in pronunciation over the centuries – from regional variations to the Queen’s English.
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History fans at the unveiling were delighted with the accent, with one telling Sky News: “Northerners are known to be happy, positive, all those lovely qualities.”
Born in Northampton but a northerner through and through, technology has brought the king’s speech back to life
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