Empty Homes Toolkit

Where are the empty homes?

The HCA publish a GIS (Geographical Information System) toolkit, available to government agencies through a secure log-in environment, which shows the density of empty homes across England. The system allows users to overlay maps with other information such as levels of housing need to help to show the relationships between empty homes and other social issues. The maps also provide information that might be helpful in developing a strategy for getting empty homes back into use.

All of the data displayed in the GIS toolkit is in the public domain - our Empty Homes Data Sources spreadsheet lists the datasets and sources to give an idea of the type of information the toolkit contains.

The GIS maps do not contain information about the ownership of empty homes. However it is possible to trace the ownership of more or less every empty home through other sources.