PLANNING
Once home to thriving international trade, docklands make popular homes.
virtually rent free to escape the cost of rates and repair. Charity shops are major beneficiaries while some local authorities and private landlords sponsor small scale art galleries and individual artists to bring some life back to the dead appearance of a street of empty property. (‘pop up’ shops). Look above the empty shops in the high
streets of your town. It will often be obvious that the shop fronts have been pushed into the ground floors of buildings that were once terraces of residential property. Even those shops still open will have blank windows above the fascia with no sign of life. More recent construction, the small
parades of neighbourhood retail units built after World War II will have residential space above designed originally for the shop keeper for managers and their families.
It’s empty and it’s ugly, but could it be turned into homes?
The hidden values Whatever the age of the shops, they have valuable attributes in common. The infrastructure is in place, roads, pavements, street lighting and drains. The front and back walls are in place and main services connected even if not in use. Bringing such buildings back into use as individual homes or small groups of flats must be less costly than new build since investment in new infrastructure is unnecessary. The waste of commercial property is
equally serious although less well documented than the retail sector. Scattered across almost all towns and cities are empty office buildings, old multi storey warehouses and factories, some vacant for many years. Although much good work has been done by converting industrial space into attractive homes – the warehouses beside
The Thames in London, in the Liverpool docks and many other cities, that now fetch eye watering prices are an obvious and excellent example – and there is still too much waste. Awful examples include Trenchard
House in Soho, once the home for unmarried police officers, empty for almost ten years and now soon to be developed into 100 homes, a mix of private and affordable housing. King’s Reach Towers, once the home of IPC the magazine publishers, has only been empty for four years, but once redeveloped will provide 173 homes with a roof garden and some ground floor retail space. London property prices and demand for London homes may well have drive these deals, but many former industrial towns in the Midlands and the north could provide similar examples at lower values.
hope for new homes There is hope that the revised planning regime, the draft National Planning Policy Framework, NPPF, published for consultation on 25 July 2011, will establish a clear policy in favour of development and economic growth. Driving planning decisions through the system in months rather than years will be a welcome change. There will be dangers in finding in
favour of development too frequently that could lead to loss of amenity land and buildings, but the demand for homes, particularly those rescued from the wasteland, cannot be denied.
Any views you’d like to express on this?
www.propertydrum.com/articles/emptysept
34 SEPTEMBER 2011 PROPERTYdrum
Photos courtesy of: Gwydion M Williams
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