§ Lord Swinfenasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many residential units of accommodation in Greater London had been unoccupied for more than 2008WA six months on 1st June 1990, how many of these are above shops and how many people were homeless in the same period.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Hesketh)I regret that information is not available in the detail requested.
Estimates provided by local authorities in their annual Housing Investment Programme returns suggest that in total there were some 130,000 empty dwellings in Greater London at 1st April 1989. We have no estimate of how many of these had been empty for more than six months, nor of how many were above shops.
In the six months ending 30th March 1990, London boroughs accepted responsibility for securing accommodation for 18,400 households under the homelessness provisions of the 1985 Housing Act.