Leeds council houses: ‘Unauthorised DIY’ by Leeds council tenants blamed for delays in letting out empty homes

Leeds City Council said its residential properties were currently empty for an average of 116 days between lets. Although that gap remains far longer than housing chiefs have targeted, the average wait has come down significantly since March, when it was above 141 days.

A report explaining the wider problem said some vacated homes needed comprehensive work to remove damp and mould before being re-let. In other cases, it was said that work carried out by previous tenants without permission needed to be fixed.

There are currently around 800 empty council houses in Leeds, out of a stock of around 54,000. That figure is down from October last year, when the total stood at more than 1,000. The report, which went before a council scrutiny board this week, said that while the decline was “positive”, it was smaller than had been predicted.

It said: “This is mainly due to the increase in the value of the works required both externally and internally to bring the property back up to standard. This increase in value is largely a result of damp and mould prevention activity as well as an increase in unauthorised DIY requiring [the repairing or removal] of third party damage.

The report added: “The time taken to resolve energy supplier issues remains a key risk. However the service is now able to ‘switch’ new properties entering the void process which will reduce this moving forward.”

Labour councillor Annie Maloney told the meeting it was “good” that the number of void properties was falling, albeit “not as quickly as we’d like”.

The housing crisis, and specifically the issue of empty properties in Leeds, was recently highlighted by the campaign group Acorn, which disrupted the city’s annual mayor-making ceremony last month to berate council bosses over a perceived lack of action. The local authority later said it had a “strong track record” on housing and pointed to its enforcement of council tax hikes on empty homes in the private sector.

Last year it was revealed that council properties in the city’s leafier suburbs are lying empty for longer, because they are less desirable to tenants and have typically poorer transport links. By contrast, it was revealed in 2021 that more than 900 people had registered an interest in moving into a single property in the Halton Moor area.