The Great British Property Scandal
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With the UK undergoing the worst housing crisis since World War II, in terms of new housing starts at least, it is not surprising that people have started to take matters into their own hands to try and fix the housing crisis themselves.
One such man is George Clarke, a Sunderland-born architect with a passion to get the government and local housing associations to bring back to life the one million homes that lie empty across the country.
The premise of the programme rests on Clarke’s idea of an empty homes loan fund, which would see local authorities offer owners of empty homes a low-cost loan to refurbish them if they agree to rent them out at affordable prices.
The idea is that when the money is repaid it would be loaned out to others looking to refurbish another property.
The first in this two-part series sets the scene for why something urgently needs to be done. The viewer is bombarded with shocking facts, such as that there are 350,000 long-term empty homes in the UK and two million people on waiting lists for council houses.
You cannot knock Clarke’s enthusiasm and passion for the cause, but the first programme lacks direction and consistency at times.
Clarke flits from trying his hand at squatting to renovating a couple’s empty home. He touches on why Labour’s old polices, such as its Pathfinder scheme, resulted in so many empty homes being earmarked for demolition.
He also takes us back to the post-World War II crisis when attitudes to housing were different and squatting was an acceptable way of life.
But it would have been good to get the other side of the argument too - why local councils have felt it necessary to leave the homes empty.
This was debated to some extent but the viewer was never given an insight into why the government was not revamping these homes.
As Clarke highlights, the situation seems ludicrous on the surface.
For example, Liverpool City Council is spending a staggering £1.28m a year on boarding up empty properties, while 21,000 families in the city are on the housing waiting list.
It is not until the second instalment of the series that things start to hot up and we see Clarke on a Challenge Anneka-style dash around the Conservative Party conference to get politicians to support his idea.
And while the architect gets the support of housing minister Grant Shapps and secures a debate in the House of Commons on empty homes, you get the impression that they are all just paying lip service to his project.
Channel Four and Clarke should be commended for putting their money where there mouths are and using their own funds to renovate properties, which makes for a number of heart-warming stories.
Although the programmes will no doubt raise awareness of the issue of empty homes, you are left with the question, what next?
The series is accompanied by a website which is trying to drum up support for the scheme and allows viewers to report an empty home in their area.
But unless Channel Four follows up the series and continues to campaign on the issue, the cause could fail before it has properly got off the ground.
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