EMPTY council houses in Dudley are costing the authority nearly £1m per month according to the latest statistics.

Dudley Council has around 21,000 properties, and figures from the council show in August, 474 were empty, resulting in lost potential rental income of £909,550.

Vacant properties, referred to by the council as void, are divided into two categories; available homes are ready to be let or waiting for inspection or repair while unavailable properties are not fit to return to the council’s stock for occupation.

On the final day of August, 272 properties were available in the council’s books.

On the same date there were 202 unavailable homes which were earmarked to be sold  because they were in a poor state of repair or were awaiting a decision on whether to be repaired.

Dudley Council has a policy of selling off homes if the repair bill tops £10,000, usually because a tenant has moved out and left the home in a shabby state.

In a report for the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which is set to meet on November 6, housing officers say: “We are continuing to deliver our Asset Management Strategy to dispose of high-cost voids, so will continue to have a certain level of rent loss associated with this project.”

Officers also say a new framework is in place to ‘streamline’ the disposal of assets and contractors have been employed to speed up repairs to void properties and reduce the amount of time they were empty.

The council collected 98.39 percent of the rent it was due in August, £16.5m in council tax and £9.4m in business rates.

In June 2024, Sky News reported there were 33,993 empty council homes in England, with 6,000 empty for more than a year.

The report was based on figures gathered by Sky and housing activist Kwajo Tweneboa using freedom of information requests.