New research suggests that London councils could turn over 22,000 empty garages owned by council into over 16,000 one-bed single-storey apartments.
Ealing, Havering, Brent and Enfield have over 70 per cent of their garages unused or empty. With the current housing shortage this situation could provide a large number of urgently needed housing in the Capital.
According to the research the total area taken by the council garages is more than 8 million square feet. The CEO of Property Partner, who lead the research, Dan Gandesha said: This is just a snapshot of publicly owned land 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. If a significant number of council garages, which are part of housing estates, are not even rented to those who should have right to them - local authority tenants - then it could be argued that this is a wasted opportunity."
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