Council made £14m from selling shabby homes

Dudley Council made £14m from selling-off vacant homes which were deemed too expensive to bring back into use.

A report for the council’s Housing and Assets Scrutiny Committee meeting on March 19 gives details of how the authority goes about offloading shabby properties.

The council owns or manages around 21,000 properties but most of the stock is ageing and costly to keep up to standard.

The report, signed by Kathryn Jones, Dudley group director of housing and assets, said: “Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of the council’s housing stock was built before 1966, with a further 22 percent built between 1967-82, and only four percent of stock having been built since 1983.

“Decisions are required as to the investment in, or disposal of, this stock to balance demand for housing with value for money and financial viability.”

The council established a Housing Asset Management Group in November 2023 to decide which properties should be disposed of resulting in 195 empty properties being sold in five lots.

The council made £13.86m from the sales which is ring-fenced for investment in new housing, either paying for new builds or purchasing new stock.

Demand in  the borough does not match the current supply; 70 percent of people on the housing register are looking for one and two-bedroom properties but less than half of the council’s homes match that need.

Councillors have raised concerns about how the council allows properties to become so dilapidated they pass the £10,000 threshold for economic repair.

At a meeting of the scrutiny committee in July, Cllr David Stanley said: “We are disposing of a lot of properties, the reason why this is happening is because tenants are not having home checks and they get into a diabolical state.

“We need to identify properties where we have got people allowing the condition of the property to get into a state that costs us money to repair.”