Cllr Steve Radford
Leader of The Liberal Party Group
41 Sutton Street
Tuebrook
Liverpool
L13 7EG

0151 259 5935

07920090322

Dear Editor

It is vital that Liverpool's Housing and Planning Leaders take note of the alarming statistics revealed by Inside Housing concerning the vast  degree of new build flats and apartments being left vacant in other northern cities

There is no reason why we should carry on relentlessly copying the mistake of others project demolishing families homes to make way for flats to be bought up by speculators.

May I quote the recent Inside Housing Website article  New builds left empty  15 December 2006 :

"Thousands of new homes are being deliberately left empty in England’s cities as investors try to cash in on large-scale house building programmes, an exclusive Inside Housing investigation has revealed.

Sources representing most of the major cities have said that a significant proportion of flats in apartment blocks are snapped up by property speculators – but then left vacant. In some blocks the number of empty homes matched the number actually lived in.

Our research found that up to 50 per cent of new flats were empty in Leeds (pictured), 40 per cent in Salford and up to 30 per cent in Hull (see box). Housing and regeneration professionals have expressed serious concerns about the trend at a time of acute housing shortage and concern over creating sustainable communities. "

Furthermore the Director of the Josweph Rowntree Foundation,
Lord Richard Best, was quoted. ‘Why are these blocks, possibly fully owned, standing entirely idle when we have a housing crisis all around?’"

In the case of Liverpool we are already seeing an alarming increase in waiting lists for all the social landlords. At the last Housing Committee the combined property pool waiting list stood at 23,500

Whilst there will always bean element of dated applications, housing officials recognosed the mismatch of housing needs as currently too many flats on offer and insufficient family homes

Stop demolishing families homes and prevent a housing market collapse by slowing the growth of already excessive vacant flats and apartments. We can and should learn from the mistakes of other cities before it is too late

Cl;lr Steve Radford
Leader of The Liberal Party Group