New research by property crowd funding platform Property Partner has found that London councils are sitting on more than 22,000 empty garages, with total local authority stock equivalent to at least 16,000 homes if converted into the average one-bed flat.
The data, obtained from Freedom Information requests, revealed that 4 out of London’s 32 councils own 53,640 lock-up garages in the capital, with 41% of them are either empty or in disrepair.
Those boroughs with the most idle properties are Ealing, Havering, Brent and Enfield, which have respectively 74% (1,480 empty garages), 72% (1,469), 71% (1,234) and 70% (2,008) lying idle.
Researchers at Property Partner calculated that the total square footage of council-owned garages in London was more than eight million (the average size of a council-owned garage – almost 150 square feet – multiplied by the number of garages in each London borough).
Assuming the garages would be replaced with flats if the councils decided to sell the land for development or build affordable homes themselves, the total square footage in each borough was then divided by the average square foot (499.4ft²) for a one-bed flat in the UK.
A conservative estimate of 16,111 new homes was reached if only one level of garages were converted into one-bed apartments. But for example, that number would possibly increase by at least fourfold to more than 64,400 new properties if four-storey apartment blocks were built in a viable location.
According to the London Assembly, the capital needs between 49,000 and 80,000 homes per year to cope with the projected population growth of a million in the next ten years. Yet, London is delivering less than half, and maybe only a quarter of the new homes it needs annually.
Dan Gandesha, CEO of Property Partner, commented: “This is just a snapshot of publicly owned land in London which is clearly surplus to requirement, underused or undeveloped.
“When we have a crisis in affordable housing not just in the capital but in the UK, it begs the question whether councils in Britain should either sell off the land for development or build new homes themselves.”
