Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the number of self-contained residential properties that have been empty for six months or longer.

There were 237,340 long-term vacant dwellings in England on 4 October 2021, a decrease of 31,045 (11.6%) from 268,385 on 5 October 2020.  The data is published annually with the next publication scheduled for March 2023.

In this dataset, long-term vacant dwellings are defined as properties liable for council tax that have been empty for more than six months and that are not subject to Empty Homes Discount class D or empty due to specific flooding events.