Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has launched a consultation that could see thousands of vacant office buildings converted into homes without planning permission.
The British Property Federation has backed the plans, but warned they will not work in every location.
With house building at a record low except during wartime, Pickles’ relaxation of the change-of-use laws could deliver 250,000 new homes and save almost £140m over ten years in what he has deemed are ‘unnecessary red tape costs’.
The plans were first laid out in the Government’s Growth Review, published alongside last month’s Budget.
The BPF supports the relaxation of the change-of-use laws in unlocking desperately needed new housing, but agrees with the consultation, to avoid any unintended consequences.
Ian Fletcher, director of policy at the BPF, said: “The desperate need for housing means no stone should be left unturned in considering new sources of housing supply.
“Office to residential conversions won’t work for all buildings, or in every area, but any trip through our suburbs soon exposes redundant office space that is never going to be brought back into commercial use.
“Such conversions will be good for those seeking homes, the wider community and local authorities, who will gain from the New Homes Bonus and council tax receipts that occupation generates.
“The Government is, therefore, right to consult on how best to make this happen.”
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Comments
Who wants to live in the high street with the smell of chips, curry, sweet and sour, pigeon or worse still seagull droppings, drunks banging on your picture window late at night and no where to park the car or two!
@Mike Wilson
How much is your house worth then?
PS. Can I sell it for you, should be a competitive price by all accounts and I'll even throw in the air tickets to Brazil from my fee.
PPS can you take Will with you. He needs asole mate.
Mike - This article is a good thing for people such as your 'famous' son...and you go off on a rant.
I would love to know what targets you have set for a FTB in the Newcastle area for a 2 up 2 down at £120k....You can find loads of 2 bed properties around the £40k mark. You could stretch to £60k if you want something that is pretty nice.
Now a £13k salary and a £40k property sounds good. For a couple both earining £20k between them, that doesn't sound too bad either.
Does your son have a partner to buy with? I'd guess not as girls and boys these days will want to avoid a nightmare potential father in law.
Dick is fine Mickie, it is a fairly standard nick name, no offence taken, my mum called be sweetie, so you use that as well if it pleases you.. Shame on you working you poor child like that, in Victorian times no doubt you would have had him up chimneys.
You are too bitter mate, I accept you feel you have failed him but move on, give him so of you modest salary, ease your conscience and get some sleep you will be less angry at the world.
Mike Wilson: I am not against house prices falling, I welcome it to make a better market. It just will not be a crash, it will be a slow drawn out process.
In that meantime people still have to move.
@Richard and @HD
You both know I'm right really! You're just too indoctrinated to see it.
Mike Wilson: Why don't you buy your son a house with your six figure salary.
@HD
What a strange inference - that I am negative or bitter. I make observations about the crass stupidity of allowing a house price boom which destroyed the banking system (requiring a bail out we're all on the hook for for the next 30 years or more), priced a generation out of housing and sucked money out of the productive economy and into housing - and you say I am negative!
Weird. What I think is negative is sitting there moaning about the fact the banks aren't lending suicidal mortgages any more and hoping and praying that one day they do and the merry go round, house price boom nonsense can all start again. That's really negative. It's already put the country on its back - any more money getting sucked into the property market and we might as well give up.
We need money going into productive industry - not into an over inflated housing market.
So, let's be positive. Let's hope the recent findings of the Banking Commission are implemented and the casino elements of banking are firewalled away from retail banking. Let's hope the banks are never again allowed to play pass the parcel with Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligations. Let's hope the Bank of England's recommended figure of 15% capital reserves is adopted - so that housing becomes affordable for our young people and so that people have to spend much less of their disposable income paying interest to the banks on their (massive) mortgages.
You know it makes sense. Let's hear something positive on here about the housing market!
@Richard
Dick! You don't mind if I call you Dick? What a funny chap you are. I express concern about the way this country has been screwed up for our children - and you assume i'm on benefits. You are a sad act!
I pop in here from time to time to give myself a break from writing software - an occupation at which I earn 6 figures.
My eldest son works in the construction industry all week and is studying part time for a degree so he can earn better money and, you never know, one day, buy an overpriced house from you - as, like most people, he will need to put a roof over his family in due course. At the weekend he does two 8 hour shifts in a local pub. I feel really sorry for him on a Friday night - he gets home from an 8 hour shift on a building site and then, an hour later, starts another 8 hour shift in a pub. And you, in your patronising claptrappy way, have the nerve to infer he is on benefits too. Wrong again Dick!
Face it - you and your ilk - the bankers and the mortgage brokers - have broken this country for the next generation. One day they may get angry - but most of them seem quite pissed off about their prospects and a lot of them see no future here. The only ones that do see a future here are the ones on benefit. Looking good eh?
Richard- thats insulting, Mickie Mouse is clever and I love him.
Mickie Mouse Wilson, sorry, comma, missed, it was those with a positive attitude live longer, people like you and Will must spend like asking for the manager to complain.
You have been banging on about emigrating for ages, are your plans coming together, if not try to sort it faster, stop posting drivel on here and use your time to fly away!
Mouse- You really are a silly person aren’t you! No one owes you or your brats a living, earn it! Are you both on benefits no doubt?
Mike Wilson : Wow you must be the most negative and bitter person posting on here. or you another one that thinks the world owes you something, cos it doesn't.
Yes the country is up the spout, blah blah blah, get over it, it is what is.
If a FTB says they can't afford to buy now, they can either wait or choose a cheaper area. Yes its tough, but thats life at the moment.
@Richard
You said: "Try not to be such a silly boy, you will longer in your rented hovel if you have a positive outlook rather than negative one."
What a load of patronising claptrap. Young people are not priced out of housing because of a negative attitude. They have been priced out by the greed of Bankers, Estate Agents, Buy to Let 'investors' and the whole NIMBY attitude of property owners in general.
Of course, one day, the edifice will come tumbling down. How on earth is a youngster of 21 today ever going to afford the 3 bed semis in grotty Outer London suburbs priced in excess of 300k? What are young people in Devon to do when 2 bed terraces in Granary Lane, Budleigh Salterton that were 60k in 1997 are now, likewise, priced at 300k? What are young people in Newcastle to do when local average wages are 13k yet a 2 up, 2 down, 'Coronation Street' style terrace is 120k? (Before you get clever, Dick, I know Coronation Street is fictional and, sort of, in Manchester - but that type of terrace can be found in all Northern industrial towns.)
My son and his peers all want to emigrate. I hope you enjoy your retirement here, Dick, with your house worth feck all as no young people either want to, or can afford to, buy houses beneath yours on 'the ladder' and you are being tended lovingly by immigrants on minimum wage in the care home you end up in.
This is clearly a good idea. Shops are closing rapidly as people shop more and more online. Only charity shops, betting shop and estate agents are left really. We could certainly free up a lot of space for needed housing by reusing this spaces.
Will my dear chap you are a silly Billy! They have turned toilets into homes, perhaps you frequented them?? Try not to be such a silly boy, you will longer in your rented hovel if you have a positive outlook rather than negative one.
Estate agent today, crummy bed sit tomorrow?
Welcome news. Who'd want to live in a place that used to be
an estate agency though [when lot's go under this Summer].