Episode 15 Britain's Empty Homes Revisited

Over the years, Britain's Empty Homes has been a mission to show

what can be done to revitalise and transform

some of the UK's estimated one million empty properties.

-Hi, there. I'm Joe.

-Hi, nice to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

In this series, I'll be catching up with some of the people who took the plunge

and staked everything on turning unloved houses into bespoke family homes.

Today, I'll be catching up with a couple from an earlier series

who were inspired to take on an abandoned property after we showed them some of Britain's empty homes.

This is a brilliant space. So much light coming through.

We'll also catch up with the empty property officers, who dedicate themselves

to turning abandoned properties back into usable homes.

The property looks absolutely brilliant.

A complete transformation.

And we'll be tracking one community's last-gasp attempt

to save swathes of Victorian terraced housing from demolition.

There is a commitment from the council and housing associations

to retain these houses in these streets, which is fantastic news.

Back in 2009, we met Martin and Louise Worsley,

who were looking to trade their London flat

for a characterful period house in the country.

Martin and Louise had been renting a two-bed flat in south-west London,

and were looking to buy their first place together.

We've been officially going out for about 18 months,

but we've known each other from nearer eight years.

I've been a firm believer in charity cases, supporting the needy,

and looking after Lou is one of those opportunities

to give back to society.

When love blossomed, Louise had moved from the country

with her dog Meg into Martin's bachelor pad.

Which is absolutely gorgeous,

but it's underneath the flight path, which makes it a little bit noisy.

4.30 in the morning they start. Nnng!

Louise was working from home, but Martin works in the City

so they needed to be close to London,

putting them in that expensive commuter belt territory.

Not that that lowered their sights.

I've always been a fan of Victorian and Georgian houses,

similar to the ones you find in Pride And Prejudice,

something that really has a lot of character and history about it.

The main thing is space. We both love big, open-plan houses,

and either have a big garden or have a small garden but access into fields.

Jules Hudson met up with Martin and Louise to show them

a rather dilapidated, empty Victorian property that might fit the bill,

in the heart of the idyllic village of Grayshott in Hampshire,

and at just under an hour from London by train,

perfectly suited for Martin's commute.

This place is one of the oldest buildings in the village, about 200 years old.

That aside, it hasn't really been touched since the '30s,

so there are loads and loads of beautiful original features in here.

The previous occupant was a protected tenant who had lived there all their life,

but when we visited, it had been standing empty for seven months

and was on the market for £300,000,

exactly half of Martin and Louise's £600,000 budget.

I like it. I like the features, in particular the fireplace.

It's bigger than it looked from the outside

and it's great seeing the natural light coming in, so high ceilings...

-On the right tracks.

-On the right tracks? Brilliant.

Well, there's lots more to explore. Come and have a look through here.

Come into here, Louise, because I'm thinking this would be the kitchen.

You've got lovely brickwork reveals around the doorway.

Over the years, this place has been all kinds of things.

It's been a laundry, it's been a cafe, it's been a B&B.

This goes through to a kind of utility area. Look at this.

I do like the features, but if you could knock through this wall, make it larger,

it makes it very interesting.

The upstairs was split into two entirely separate areas.

The main section, reached by the stairs in the hallway,

led up to three bedrooms. And then there were more stairs at the back.

I've got a few plans here which will help us

make sense of this weird geography. Come and have a look up here.

At the top of the back stairs was a second area, which contained a loo, a bathroom and this...

-Wow.

-This is enormous, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-It just goes on and on and on. Still interesting?

-Yes.

-Definitely.

-OK, good.

-A challenge.

-Well, you're going to be in London paying for it all.

You're going to be here working, though, and we've got a perfect little office space for you.

Come with me. Come and have a look outside.

OK. In fairness to you, Louise,

it's not the acres that you perhaps might have dreamt of,

but I did bring you out here to promise you somewhere to work, and what I'm suggesting is this.

It's an old laundry.

-But it would offer you somewhere to actually go to work.

-My commute.

Yeah. Well, let's do the commute. Come on, follow me through here.

-I think this is quite a useful little space, really.

-Yeah.

-It would be a really cosy place to work.

-Yeah.

Obviously, it needs a new roof and a few other bits and pieces,

probably a damp course, and at least you've got it separate from home.

-Interesting?

-Yeah.

-Very much so.

-Good. Worth coming?

-Definitely.

-Excellent.

So, things were off to a good start.

Later, we'll see what Martin and Louise thought of the second property

they were shown around - an empty three-bedroom semi-detached cottage

in a beautiful rural setting.

Throughout Britain, it's not just private buyers like Martin and Louise

working to turn deserted properties into functioning family homes.

Local council empty property officers work tirelessly

to track down the owners of abandoned houses

and get these places back into circulation.

A year ago, we caught up with empty property officer

Jason Hall in Waveney, north-east Suffolk,

on his way to check up on a house he was well acquainted with.

After sitting vacant for eight years, it had finally been bought

by a local developer with a £10,000 grant from the council.

Today, I'm going along to have a look at progress,

so we can get some people moved into the property.

Jason was meeting the developer to see how the plans were progressing

and to find out when new tenants would be able to move in.

-Hi, Philip. How are you?

-All right. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

Much of the house was not only uninhabitable,

but it was also unsafe.

While there was still plenty to do,

things had clearly moved on since Jason's previous visit.

OK, it looks a lot different out here now.

I take it that's a new addition. What have you done in the roof?

We've re-roofed it, we've re-insulated the roof,

-put a new dormer on.

-What's in the dormer?

-That'll be a shower room.

-OK.

-The windows are being replaced.

-I mean, this room, from memory, this was the old kitchen, was it?

-Yeah.

Obviously, you've taken the whole lot down. What's it going to be?

-This'll be kitchen, small utility room, bathroom.

-Yeah.

There's lots going on. Have you come across any problems?

-The main problem is, this entire house is built on filled land.

-OK.

So, we had to go down six feet to hit it sand and soil to put the foundations in,

but we've got past that stage now.

And along with those changes, new foundations had been laid,

and also, a new staircase to allow for safe access to the top floor of the property.

Wow. This one is a lot different to when I came last, as well.

That section was all timber falling in, broken, wasn't it?

-That's where the pigeons were getting in.

-Yeah, I remember it.

-The skirting is to match the character of the house.

-Yes.

-So the taller ones.

-Yes, the taller skirtings.

Big question now is, when is it going to be finished?

The extension goes up next week, so six weeks,

two months at the outside.

-Not too long to wait now, then.

-No.

-Excellent. Well, I mean,

you can see from now the way it is and the way it's coming together,

it's going to make a fantastic family home

and we can't wait to get some people in it.

Excellent. Thank you.

A year later, Jason's come back to meet Philip

-and see how the building has progressed.

-Morning, Philip.

-Good to see you.

-Morning.

The property looks absolutely brilliant.

A complete transformation from last time I came here.

I mean, it looks like you've done so much.

-This is how the property would have looked originally.

-Yeah.

We've had the brickwork cleaned up.

-Because it was really dark, wasn't it, before?

-Yeah.

-Repointed it, tidied one or two of the arches up. New windows.

-Yeah.

-New front door.

-It looks really, really good.

-Do you want to have a look inside?

-Yeah.

-Excellent.

This property is one of many in Waveney which has been

brought back to life thanks to the council's drive

to create social housing using their developers' grant system.

Wow. Again, the same as outside - what a transformation.

It looks absolutely amazing. Like I said, the quality

and the standard that you've done it to in here

looks really, really good. I mean, last time I came, no heating,

there was nothing in here, was there? It was a complete mess.

And it looks really modern and really good.

Basically, we've done what we would like to do.

You know, what we thought was right for the house.

It probably cost us about £40,000 in the end

-to get all this work done.

-Yeah.

£18,000 of the renovation budget went on building a rear extension,

which houses the kitchen and the bathroom.

This, again, is all very different to last time.

Last time we'd have been stood in the back garden here, wouldn't we?

And the only thing I can remember being there

last time was just a single door.

You've put in a nice family bathroom down here,

cos there wasn't a bathroom in the whole place before,

so it's nice to see there's one been put on the back here

which looks really good.

Not only have we done that bathroom,

we've also put another bathroom in upstairs,

which is extra space, and I'll show you.

Excellent.

Upstairs there are three finished bedrooms,

and at the very top of the house,

Philip has squeezed in a shower room.

Once we got the new staircase in,

we managed to form a bedroom at the front

and a second bathroom up here by creating the dormer window.

Excellent. Thanks for showing me around.

It's been really, really good.

When this house was taken on, it had been empty for at least eight years.

Now it's been turned into a comfortable home for a family

who were previously on the council waiting list.

The property was in a really poor condition beforehand

and now it's been completely changed around.

It's had the extension put on the back,

and for the council, it ticks so many boxes.

It brings an empty property back into use,

it creates a decent home,

and it brings somebody off the temporary accommodation waiting list

into permanent accommodation. I'm really pleased with what

we've seen today.

Throughout the country, there are some spectacular homes

slowly crumbling into ruins, but in ruins,

there's always potential, and it can be truly inspiring

to meet people who have invested their time, their money,

their energy, rescuing once majestic family homes.

In Powys, mid Wales,

architectural woodworker John Nethercott and his wife Annie

turned an abandoned 16th-century manor house

into a spectacular family home.

We drove into the yard and it was winter.

It was gloomy, it was wet, it was really horrible,

and the whole house was clad in concrete because I think they were

trying to keep the weather out,

and there was this extraordinary lump on the front of the house

which John said, "Ah, that's an oriel window."

So we set to because of John's enthusiasm and knowledge

as much as anything.

And basically because of John's understanding of the genre,

I suppose, you listened to the house, really, didn't you,

I think is what it boils down to, and let the house speak.

This property had been empty for over a year and a half.

It was in quite a state when John and Annie discovered it.

The real trouble starts with these things when you start

taking out the stuff that you know doesn't belong

to the original fabric.

And we were very fortunate here for the house not to be listed,

so we carried on letting the house speak to us -

where the walls should or shouldn't be,

where the windows should or shouldn't be.

And it wasn't rocket science, to be quite honest.

The house told us what to do next.

We just decided to go for it,

and I think if we'd thought about the amount of work

and the amount of time and the amount of money

it actually cost, it would have scared us, but having said that,

I didn't regret a single minute of it.

The couple snapped up this incredible place

for the bargain price of £45,000.

It took them 25 years to restore and cost them around £425,000.

All of John and Annie's careful work paid off, though.

Their home was valued at over £1 million.

And as an extra bonus,

the manor was reinstated as a Grade II listed property.

I feel really proud that we've re-presented it to the world,

because the person who built it in the first instance

was a very fine craftsman, and to be able to re-establish it

as a beautiful place is, I think...

you know, I'm proud of it and I think it's a privilege,

-really, that we were able to do it.

-Yes.

Earlier, we saw Martin and Louise Worsley explore

an enormous 200-year-old house, untouched since the 1930s.

But to give them perspective, we also took them

to see a property couched in an acre of Hampshire woodland.

'Six miles from a mainline station,

'this three-bedroom cottage was handy

'for Martin's commute to London.

'It had only been empty for a month, so it was in far better

'condition than the first property we showed them.

'It was also well within their £600,000 budget.'

-This is on the market for £475,000.

-Wow.

-The setting is stunning.

Right in the middle of the woods. Very rural.

And unlike our earlier property,

-this one you could actually kind of move into.

-Oh, right.

And you do get an awful lot with it. Come with me.

'Larger neighbouring properties were valued at well over £700,000,

'so at £475,000, this was a bit of a bargain.

'Built in 1850, then extended in the 1950s,

'this semi-detached cottage was a little on the small side,

'but there was plenty of room for expansion.'

It's very airy. It's very light.

There's lots of bright light coming in, which is great.

Once again, ceilings are surprisingly tall.

What we're standing in now is effectively a 1950s extension,

hence the greater proportions.

As we go through, the old bit, well, it's all there too.

Come and have a look at this.

You can see by the height of the ceilings that this is the old

cottage-y bit. Here's your diner bit, and in there you've got...

Not a badly appointed galley kitchen.

Certainly you could walk in and just get on with it if you wanted to.

It's a nice, once again, light, airy space.

I like the idea that we can just walk straight

out into the garden, having a little back door there.

'Upstairs, there was a new bathroom...'

'Three good-sized bedrooms...'

'And a shower room.'

'But it was the garden that was the real

'jewel in the crown of this property.'

So as you can see, it is technically a semi-detached.

Your bit is the white bit, the neighbours are the cream bit.

But you also get an acre with it...

..of that woodland. OK?

So you've got a garden with quite an interesting kind of topology

to it, and geography. So it's not all flat.

You do get an acre of fun for Meg, a bit of garden for you

and a very, very quiet spot.

Absolutely amazing, especially the acre of woodland put onto this.

It is just huge, and very exciting with such a great garden.

It's quite a difficult fit, getting people that want to be

so close to the capital, for obvious reasons,

because essentially, we're up against commuter belt territory.

But because it's empty, because it needs a bit doing to it,

you know, you're well within budget, and all this land.

And the woodland.

'Later we'll find out what Louise and Martin decided to do

'and whether they dared take the plunge.'

Over a year ago, I was in Granby, Liverpool,

where a phenomenal amount of houses lay boarded up and empty,

making ghost streets out of once thriving communities.

'Row after row of increasingly dilapidated Victorian terraces

'faced an uncertain future,

'and despite local residents wanting them

'to be brought back into use,

'the reality was that the majority were earmarked by the council

'for demolition to be replaced by new builds.

'But the council's plans have been caught up in red tape

'and bureaucracy, leaving hundreds of houses boarded up.

'I went to meet Jonathan Brown, a town planner and member

'of the Liverpool Civic Society,

'who'd been campaigning to save these streets.'

Help me make sense of this. When we're looking round here,

we're not talking about a few houses that are boarded up,

we're talking about streets and streets.

Why have they been boarded up for so long?

You have to track back probably ten years or more, really, to understand

that there's a policy to knock down over 20,000 houses

across Merseyside because there were seen to be too many

for the population that has, of course, shrunk

since its height before the war.

It's just such a waste of building resources, but also money.

There must be a lot of money tied up in these places,

-public money as well.

-Absolutely.

Hundreds of millions has been spent in Liverpool alone

just to buy up, board up and potentially bulldoze,

although thankfully they have not yet been bulldozed.

And now we're left in this limbo land,

so the important thing is, where do we go from here?

So how much hope is there

that many of these can be saved from the bulldozer?

As we can see, they're still in pretty fair condition,

given the neglect that they've had.

There's still the prospect,

I think, of putting people to work on them, to learn skills.

For example, people who are unemployed

and looking for a job could work and train in these houses.

We know that there are investors lined up,

keen to get stuck in if they can get hold of the properties.

I think, while they still stand, there is hope,

but something needs to change, clearly.

We would call on the government to sit down with the council

and take a new approach, really,

and try and work with local residents to get this sorted out.

It really is shocking to see buildings sitting here in this state.

And it's not just a few of them. Street after street,

whole neighbourhoods, that are now ghost towns.

But there are still a few residents around here,

and they're determined to keep the community sprit alive.

'In the street where Eleanor Lee and Carole Foulder live,

'only eight out of the 60 houses were actually occupied.

'These two were doing their best to keep their community alive

'and the bulldozers at bay.

'Alongside their long-running campaign,

'Eleanor and Carol had made it their mission to brighten up the street.'

In a sense, this community felt like it got forgotten.

People moved out, the buildings more or less boarded up.

But you've taken it on and you've done your best to try

and keep life here. How have you done that?

Talk me through some of the little touches that you've done

to reclaim control of the streets.

We started connecting to each house that was lived in.

So we started green links and then we started painting

and then we just expanded, so that we'd done....

Oh, it's over 50 houses now.

And it's quite a nice feeling when you think,

"I'll do the house next door. That looks quite nice.

"Put a few more plants in that one down there."

And that's how it took off.

There are some plans for development now.

What are they? What's in store?

The city council in our four streets, they own 130 properties,

and they've put those as a block out to tender to a developer.

There'll be some demolitions, I imagine,

but the focus of it is refurbishment.

On the face of it, that seems like good news.

But what would YOU like to see happen here?

At the moment, it's like one size fits all.

It's like it moves as a block,

and no individuals can buy into it,

So our preferred option would have been

to allow members...individuals

to buy cheap

and do them up at their own rate.

There is still hope, so I wish you all the best with that.

-Oh, there's a lot of hope.

-Onward, onward!

-Onward!

That's exactly it.

'Today, 18 months on, and we've returned

'to Granby in Liverpool.

'The houses in these streets are now safe

'from the bulldozer.

'The local council have vowed to regenerate the houses in the area

'and are keen to work with local residents like Carol and Eleanor

'so that together they can save these homes and at long last breathe life

'back into Granby.'

The idea of demolition was a terrible thing.

Because we literally lived in limbo for easily 20 years.

We didn't know whether to put a new roof on our house...

what to do.

And now,

that has definitely been lifted.

Liverpool City Council have also been awarded £30 million

to regenerate their housing stock.

Jonathan Brown hopes previous renovations in nearby streets

will now be rolled out across Granby.

We can see from our houses on the right here

where these were renovated at the end of the '90s

and we'd like to see this happen on Cairns Street.

Not rocket science, as they say. Simple renovations.

Roll it across these empty streets

and allow people to do some of that work themselves, too.

Keeping their community together has been a long battle

for Eleanor and Carol,

but finally it's beginning to look like there is some light

at the end of the tunnel.

There is now a commitment from the council and the housing associations

to retain these houses in these streets, which is fantastic news.

That's a tribute to the residents,

who've campaigned for a long time to save these streets.

Back in 2009, we met Martin and Louise Worsley,

They were looking for a house with character, with space,

with bags of potential.

They were very impressed with the two properties we showed them.

So I've come back to meet them and find out what

they did next.

'In the end, Martin and Louise decided they weren't quite ready

to leave London just yet,

'but thanks to their time on Britain's Empty Homes,

'they caught the bug for taking on an empty property.

'And they found one of their own, in Southfields, near Wimbledon.

'This three-bedroomed terrace cost £585,000.

'It had previously been rented out as three separate rooms

'and was very dated,

'complete with an outside toilet that housed the boiler.'

-Good morning, how are you doing?

-Very well.

Louise, nice to meet you. Martin. Who's this little fella?

This is Toby.

That's been a big change since we saw you last.

Very big change.

-How old's Toby now?

-Seven months old.

-Fantastic.

When we saw you 3½ years ago,

you looked at these two properties. What happened next?

We thought long and hard about it and came to the conclusion

that being a little closer into London

is probably what we needed at the moment.

So we spent some time looking around,

and we had some really good friends in the area,

so we settled in Southfields.

-Let's look inside and see what you've achieved with your hard work.

-OK.

A brilliant space! so much light coming through.

Tell me what it was like down here and what you did.

The wall used to be literally across here and the back door.

The kitchen was in this area now,

where we have the downstairs loo.

So all of this bit is brand-new

and it's worked so well for us.

You open the bi-fold doors in the summer,

you can have lots of people round.

Amazing, yeah, it's a really good space.

You've pushed three or four metres into the garden

but you still have a garden, which is crucial.

This was about having not just a property with character, but space.

Where you're standing now, on the other side was a staircase

that went all the way up, double the size of the width here.

That's hard to get your head round. You're saying these stairs

-came up, turned and carried on going up here?

-Yes.

And you've got rid of those so you can extend

-the front bedroom?

-Yeah.

'Moving those stairs also allowed them to rip out

'the old bathroom and create this beautiful, bright new one.

'But it did come at a price as the overall renovation budget

'went from an estimated £70,000 to £100,000.'

What sorts of problems did you have, cos there's always problems

in a build this size?

We decided to do everything in one year - get married,

do the house.

We thought we'd get it all done in 3½ months or so,

so when we came back from honeymoon,

there were some bits done but still a lot of work to be done.

A bit of a shock,

to say we needed double the amount of time to get the house done.

The cost did start to go up. We managed to keep costs

as much under control as possible,

but the old adage of adding an extra 20%-30% on top

of what you imagined - absolutely.

This has turned out brilliantly.

You have great space,

lovely-proportioned rooms. You must be very happy with this now?

Very happy.

'It may have cost them more than they estimated in both time and money,

'but in the end, Martin and Louise got EXACTLY what they wanted.'

It's been quite a journey. You got married had a baby,

there's even another dog, I think they've multiplied

since you were last on the programme!

We'd love to go into the country when it fits the lifestyle we want,

but for now London works really well, on the outskirts,

but we would definitely look for another empty home at some point.

And that next property will be an empty property,

so you've caught the bug?

Yeah, we love being able to stamp your own mark on it

and renovate, so we'll definitely look for another property to do up.

Amazing. It's really good to hear.

It's a wonderful home. I'm pleased it's turned out so well.

Hopefully it was worth the six months of extra grey hairs.

-SHE LAUGHS

-Definitely.

-It sounds like it was, so many congratulations.

-Thank you.

It's great everything's turned out so well for Martin and Louise.

This is a really lovely home.

And lovely to see they've reaped the rewards

and all the benefits of taking on an empty property.

So much so, I would say they're now hooked

so when they eventually grow out of this place,

I suspect they'll look to take on another of Britain's empty homes.

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