New Homes from Vacant Historic Buildings

From the extraordinary to the everyday, our historic places and spaces are a crucial part of our national stock of homes, workspaces and community spaces. Today, approximately 21% of all homes in England are traditionally constructed properties, built before 1919, while 33% of our non-residential properties were similarly built over 100 years ago (VOA, 2023; Whitman et al, 2016).

As the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment, Historic England seeks to work with partners to keep heritage assets in productive use, and find new uses for those which stand vacant. In this short insight report, we consider the potential opportunities to provide homes in vacant or underused historic properties.

Looking at floorspace data from 1) vacant historic non-domestic properties, 2) from underused retail units and 3) from vacant historic homes, we calculated the number of potential new homes in historic properties according to UK Government technical housing standards:

• A standard 2 bedroom flat requires 70 square metres
• A standard 3 bedroom flat requires 95 square metres

There is an opportunity to provide 560,000 to 670,000 new homes in England by repairing and repurposing existing historic buildings

It is notoriously difficult to track vacant space in England, let alone vacant space in historic buildings. The data presented here are thus broad estimates calculated using multiple available datasets and evidence-led assumptions. All assumptions are transparently presented below.

What is the estimated number of vacant non-domestic historic properties in England?

Non-domestic floorspace in England

In the absence of a single data source for non-domestic floor space, 2 datasets are used:

• Non-Domestic National Energy Efficiency Data (ND-NEED) (DESNZ, 2023): Floorspace data is provided for 2023. The data only represents buildings in use, and is estimated to report on 86%, 93%, and 93.5% of the total retail, office, and industrial space respectively. Numbers have therefore been adjusted accordingly. Aggregated data is only available for England and Wales; therefore, numbers have been scaled down according to the ratio of English to Welsh floor space present in the Valuation Office Agency datasets
• Valuation Office Agency (VOA, 2023) non-domestic rating data for England: These data are available for the year 2023 but represents the stock of rated properties from 2017. Vacant properties can be included in the ratings list

What proportion of non-domestic floor space is vacant?

An all-party parliamentary group (APPG) report for Housing Market and Housing Delivery and APPG for Ending Homelessness (2023) found:

• 14% of retail space was vacant across England's commercial stock
• 7% of office space was vacant across England's commercial stock
• 75% of the vacant properties (from sample) could be considered for adaptation into housing, but some vacancies are necessary to allow for business expansion and contraction

Additionally, for industrial properties:

• There was a 6.5% vacancy rate for industrial units across the UK in 2023 (Mofid et al, 2024)

We applied the above estimates to historic stock assuming a similar level of vacancy across the whole non-domestic stock. However, the exact relationship between national vacancy rates and historic floor space vacancy rates is not known.

Non-domestic historic floorspace in England

Data on the age of non-domestic stock is only publicly available for 2015 from the VOA data (Whitman et al, 2016). This shows that approximately:

• 48% of non-domestic retail space was built pre-1919
• 33% of non-domestic office space was built pre-1919
• 17% of non-domestic industrial space was built pre-1919
• In total, 33% of non-domestic stock was built pre-1919

Given the age of this data, we consider the publicly available data on change in total floor space over time and adjust the data accordingly.

• There was only a 1% change in overall non-domestic stock between 2015/16 and 2022/23 according to VOA data
• We assume the change in stock impacts all non-domestic property including historic property. This approach could overestimate the total floor space of historic buildings if the change in stock disproportionately impacted the historic stock. For example, the overall proportion built pre-1919 may have changed as new properties have been built since 2015 and some pre-1919 stock likely lost in this period

An alternative data source, the ND-NEED database, offers data on the age of properties from the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) data, showing:

• 24% of the non-domestic stock (all uses) was built pre-1900
• 13% was built between 1900 and 1939

Many historic and listed buildings likely lack an EPC rating (15% of the ND-NEED database have no EPC rating), therefore the 2015 VOA figures that do not significantly differ, are preferred when estimating the percentage of historic stock.

If 75% of the vacant historic (pre-1919) non-domestic floorspace is re-purposed for residential use, there is capacity for up to 251,000 1 bed homes or 140,000 2 bed homes.

As demonstrated in the tables below the estimates using VOA data are slightly lower than ND-NEED ranging from 229,000 1 bed homes to 128,000 2 bed homes.

What is the potential supply of homes through increased occupancy of retail buildings?

Data and evidence for under-occupied property is sparse. However, available evidence does suggest that under occupied property may be a crucial source of future housing.

In 2019, Poynton's Consultants (Fairman, 2019) undertook a detailed study of Nottingham’s historic retail core and found potential for 308 new 2 bedroom flats by renovating the upper floors of just 458 retail units (individual rating units).

There were 245,000 pre-1919 retail units (hereditaments) in England in 2015 according to Valuation Office Agency data from Whitman et al. 2016. If we assume 75% of these could be re-used for residential units at the same conversion rate as the Nottingham historic core, we can estimate the housing potential in under-occupied spaces of historic retail units.

If 75% of the upper floors of under-occupied historic retail properties are repurposed at a conversion rate similar to Nottingham historic core, then there is a further capacity for 120,000 1 bed homes above shops.

How many vacant domestic historic properties are there in England?

The 2021 UK Census provides regional data on vacant domestic properties. Approximately 1.4 million properties (or 5.6%) of the UK housing stock is estimated to be 'truly vacant' (meaning a residential dwelling that is unoccupied on Census Day, 21 March 2021, with no usual residents, has no indication of being used as a second home, and is not inhabited by short-term residents). The Valuation Office Agency provides the regional distribution of pre-1919 dwellings. Using this data, we estimate the number of vacant historic dwellings in England. We found that there are opportunities from 300,000 vacant historic dwellings.

References

1. APPG for Housing Market and Housing Delivery and APPG for Ending Homelessness (2023). Joint Inquiry into Rethinking Commercial to Residential Conversions
2. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2023). Non-domestic National Energy Efficiency Data Framework (ND-NEED). (Accessed February 2025)
3. Fairman, J. (2019). Historic Retail Core Study. Poyntons Consultancy
4. MHCLG (2015). Technical housing standards – nationally described space standard. (Accessed February 2025)
5. Mofid, K., Gulliford, J. and Merryweather, R. (2024). Market in Minutes: UK Commercial. Savills UK. (Accessed 17 February 2025)
6. ONS (2023). Number of vacant and second homes, England and Wales: Census 2021. (Accessed February 2025)
7. VOA (2023). Non-domestic rating: stock of properties including business floorspace, 2023. (Accessed February 2025)
8. Whitman, C., Prizeman, O. and Barnacle, M.L. (2016). Correlating Maintenance, Energy Efficiency and Fuel Poverty for Traditional Buildings in the UK. Historic England, Cadw, Historic Environment Scotland