Ian and Marcie Britain's Empty Homes

Across the country, empty properties that could be homes are just

waiting to be brought back into use.

I'll be finding out why

and what you need to do to rescue a house for yourself.

And along the way I'll be doing some digging up my own, to find out

more about our housing stock, our heritage and why

we should be both reinventing and preserving Britain's empty homes.

Renovating an empty home can be a life-changing experience,

but you'll need to be brave, it'll push you to your limit.

However, the benefits of taking on one of these buildings

can be truly rewarding.

On today's show,

a couple who've bought a rundown Victorian house in North London,

which they plan to restore and turn into an energy efficient home.

We want to give it its 120 year service.

We want to bring it back to life.

A regeneration project dedicated to keeping alive the ancient

craft skills needed to maintain Britain's historic buildings.

We're teaching people about lime plastering, lime mortar,

masonry - a whole range of different skills.

And one of the country's empty property officers

on the trail of an abandoned cottage.

It's great that we're there to provide housing for people

and help people who are struggling.

Ian and his partner, Marcie, had always been dreamed of a self-build.

But once they set eyes on a rundown Victorian house in North London,

they realised they could be as creative with an empty property.

I thought I would probably build a house rather than renovate

a house, and there are challenges that come along with a renovation.

Part of that challenge is that

they want to make this 130-year-old house energy efficient.

For the past 20 years,

I've wanted to build a house that is very cheap to run.

That uses very little electricity and uses very little gas.

And I think this is going to be the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The Victorian house had been divided into three separate flats,

and now Ian and Marcie going are to restore it to its former glory

but with a modern twist.

We want a house that's very up-to-date,

that's using all of the most modern materials we can find.

Be that solar thermal, external wall insulation,

be it all of the new airtightness materials you can get,

to make it as energy efficient as possible.

But they're aware a house like this comes with plenty of history,

and they are keen to be sensitive to its heritage.

The house was built in about 1885.

It was an absolute wreck, an absolute wreck.

The floorboards were smashed up, the fires were smashed up,

the wallpaper was peeling off the walls,

there were holes in the roof, there was water coming in.

It was a real feat of imagination to look through what was there.

With a second baby on the way, they want to create a home that's

not only energy efficient, but works for their expanding family.

I think the dream is a family house.

I think we are really, really lucky to be in a position to

kind of, hopefully, I mean, it's not done yet, but live out that dream.

Ian and Marcie certainly have ambitious plans,

and I can't wait to have a look round this grand, old house.

Tell me about this place. You've just bought this, have you?

We bought it back in February. OK. It's an old wreck.

We're hoping to do it up, do a full energy efficient renovation of it.

Wow! It's a stunning area.

Any area looks good on a day like today, but even so,

that view is incredible, isn't it?

The view kind of sold it.

I think the view added a bit of value to the house. Good.

Well, look, it looks a bit tired,

a bit in need of some love and care from the outside,

shall we take a look inside?

Sure. After you.

Ian and Marcie already have some plans in mind,

but making a house of this size and age energy efficient

isn't always straightforward.

Wow! First thing is the scale of coming in this house.

The height and light and space is incredible, isn't it?

It really is quite a grand scale.

It's one of the things that first attracted us to the house.

This window is south facing, so a lot of light comes into the house.

And we're hoping to knock this wall down as well,

which means that the light can then flood through the house.

So when you started to explore, what sort of things are you finding,

how big are the challenges with this property?

We found a big recess underneath the floor,

which is potentially great for storage,

but we need to think about... How we use it. Yeah.

We also found asbestos. Nice. Always a good moving in present!

It's gone now.

We also found damp. Right.

We also found this wall is busy splitting away from the house,

so that's going to need to be tied in.

Various little surprises that we discovered.

Then upstairs, how many bedrooms is this going to be?

Currently, it was sold to us as six bedrooms. Six?!

It won't be six.

How many are you having, are you having triplets? No!

It might look like that but no.

It will be four bedrooms by the time we've finished.

I really like this. It's completely fair enough

when people subdivide these into flats,

if that makes good use of them.

But it's lovely to see these old buildings being used

as the kind of family homes they were originally built as.

It's a nice feeling, isn't it?

We want to breathe life back into this building as well. It's a wreck.

And we want to give it its 120 year service.

We want to bring it back to life,

we want to make it a house for our family.

Up at the top of the house, basic work has already started.

Wow!

I thought the view out the front was good but that's absolutely stunning.

What is the plan up here? This isn't going to be...

You're going to have a couple of main bedrooms just below this,

aren't you? Then up here, what happens?

You've seen that we are already starting to, kind of, knock through,

but we'll completely knock through here.

And have a big studio space.

Now I know that one of the things you really want to do with this house

is make it as environmentally friendly as possible.

What are you thinking?

Well, we're going to insulate it very heavily,

so we're going to externally insulate all of the walls.

We're going to very heavily insulate the roof here as well.

We're going to wrap this building in a giant duvet effectively,

which extends over the roofs, extends down the walls.

But we're also going to make it breathable

by putting in a mechanical ventilation system.

Very ambitious plans.

I think it's a first for me on the programme,

because we often talk about making these old buildings very breathable.

And this is to seal them up and make them airtight,

when it's sort of rickety and got loads of holes in it.

It's going to be really tough. You think you can do that?

I hope so!

As the building was formerly three separate flats, Ian and Marcie

have a number of rooms that will need reconfiguring and redesigning.

So, a big project ahead, huge project ahead,

baby on the way, it's going to be a challenging 12 months.

What are your biggest concerns at this point as you look forward?

Money. Yes, definitely money. Timescales. Time pressures.

Materials, making sure we use the right materials

and getting it right first time, I think, is the big issue.

Yeah. We'll take you to see a couple who have been through this

and very successfully they've carried out a complete renovation.

But also, they do have particular knowledge of

environmentally-friendly techniques and building materials

and all that kind of stuff.

So I think there'll be some really good advice there as well.

Hopefully they can set you on your way with confidence.

Sounds fantastic. Thank you.

What an incredible property.

You don't always find first-time renovators bold

and brave enough to take on such a mammoth project,

particularly with a baby soon to arrive. But why not?

Surely anything's possible with hard work, thorough planning

and a little bit of help.

Sadly, derelict dwellings are an all too common occurrence across the UK.

In Amber Valley, Derbyshire,

400 properties a year are reported to the council as being abandoned.

It's the job of local council empty property officer Sue Lee

to track the owners of these buildings down

and bring these houses back into good use.

Today, I am going to see a property that's a two-bed pre-1919.

It was brought to my attention through my usual

processes of checking council tax records as to what's been

empty for over six months.

The owner no longer lived at the property and was unable to maintain

the house, so Sue signed him up for a government-funded leasing scheme.

Emma, from the housing association, has taken on the lease

and is going to show Sue what stage they are at with the cottage.

Hi, Emma. Hi, Sue. Thanks for meeting me here. No problem. Nice to see you.

Here we are at one of the 21 properties we're now leasing

under the Empty Property Scheme.

So if we go around to the back,

I'll take you inside and let you have a look. Good, show me.

Under the Empty Property Scheme, the local housing association

takes charge of the works and the house for five years.

During that time, they rent it out as affordable housing

and at the end of the five years, they hand it back.

Here we are. Lovely little kitchen.

Yeah, it's not in too bad condition, actually.

Can you tell me what you've done with the property so far?

So far, myself and a surveyor have visited the property to

identify what works are required.

We've discussed these with the owner

and agreed who will be completing which of those works.

Then we've got to a point where the owner was ready to hand over,

so we've signed the legal agreement

so that we will be in possession of the property for five years.

I've got the keys, so now we can hand over to the contractor

and they can start completing those works.

I think it should only take between four to six weeks.

So we're in a position already to start advertising for a tenant,

so that once those works are completed,

very quickly we'll have the property occupied, back into use.

Excellent.

I didn't think it would be such a short time frame. That's great.

The two-bed cottage is on the road to becoming a home once more.

Emma already has some potential tenants in mind.

As it's a two-bedroom,

we will be giving preference to those who've got children.

So, a couple and a child or a single person

and a child are quite likely to be moving into this property.

It's good stuff. Thanks.

Sue is pleased for the plans for the cottage and delighted that one

of Amber Valley's abandoned houses could soon be a family home again.

It's always rewarding to meet our housing association partners

and I know they're going to deliver,

they're going to renovate this property,

turn it into a family home. It's wonderful.

It's great news

and it's really the reason why I do enjoy my job.

It's wonderful, we can help people like the owners of this property,

who are struggling, who have the best of intentions.

It's great that we're there to provide housing for people

and help out people who are struggling.

It's not just organisations who can save abandoned buildings,

private owners can too.

So, if you want to take on one of Britain's empty homes,

contact your local empty property officer or talk to local

estate agents and auctioneers about abandoned buildings in your area.

Across the UK, many people are inspired to revive our abandoned

housing stock and bring these forgotten buildings back into use.

Over in Hertfordshire, Irene Skellam has done just that.

Together with her husband,

Irene embarked on an adventurous plan when she bought a disused

farm complete with farmhouse, outhouses and three kilns.

The task in front of us was huge.

The house needed an awful lot of work doing to it

and so did the outbuildings.

We tackled the house first and made that liveable.

I ran the house as a bed and breakfast for a while

just to generate income to save up money to do the next outbuilding.

Whatever we earned on the property got ploughed back into it straightaway.

As well as the main farmhouse, which was their home, they had

planned to renovate the kilns and turn them into holiday cottages.

But Irene's life changed completely when her husband, Rick, died.

I thought I would have to move away.

I thought that the kiln and the granary attached to it was

such a big project that I'd have to sell it off to a builder.

It was actually on the evening of the funeral,

talking to really good friends, when I mentioned that, they said,

"No, why are you selling it to a builder?

"You can do it."

It was just, "Yes, I can."

It was one of those comments that spurred me into action.

So, Irene changed their initial plans to suit her circumstances.

She sold the farmhouse

and decided she'd turn the kilns into her new home.

It would be an 18-month-long mission

to carry out this epic transformation.

I had to sell the farmhouse first to allow me

to start on the kiln renovation.

I'd spent hours walking around it. I knew it inside out.

In my head, I'd already planned it anyway.

But even with the end goal in sight,

the reality of the condition of the kilns was a wake-up call.

They smelt very, very strongly of beer.

The roofs were leaking very badly.

The upper floors had huge holes in them.

You had to be very careful where you walked or your foot would go through.

Downstairs, they were swimming in water.

They were in a dreadful state, really.

Irene spent ?650,000 turning the kilns into her dream home

as well as renovating a two-bedroom cottage next door.

I've ended up with something beyond my wildest dreams.

I love the veranda and the garden

because that's a beautiful entertaining space for friends.

I love my natural stone floors with my underfloor heating.

I love my kitchen.

I love my bedroom and bathroom, pretty much all of it, really!

For Irene, the process of reviving this disused farm

and kilns gave her as much pleasure as living in it now does.

I think my husband would be very cross at me having spent

so much money on the build, but I think he'd be very proud of it.

I just hope he's looking down and can see it.

Reviving disused buildings isn't just about creating more

housing stock, it's often also about keeping skills

and methods of preserving buildings alive.

Across Britain, there are thousands of historic buildings at risk,

many lying empty and unloved.

Restoring these types of buildings

requires specialist master craftsmen.

However, often these days, they can be in short supply.

I've come to Norfolk to visit a historic site

in need of these highly skilled workers.

Luckily the team in charge of this medieval building have plans

to restore it, taking on local apprentices, who, in turn,

will hopefully become master craftsmen.

The plan is to turn it into homes and live/work spaces.

Heading up the project is

Darren from the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust.

Darren, really nice to meet you.

Tell me a bit about the building just behind us here.

It's a Grade II listed building, formerly a merchant's house.

There's been a building on the site for about the last 800 years.

Most of what we can see today is Georgian.

Although there is some late medieval fabric there as well.

The standing archaeology of the building is very interesting.

So, what sort of state is it in now?

It's been empty for some time, has it?

It's been empty for quite a long time, and rather neglected.

The previous owner did a few repairs, but I should imagine

some of the more complex issues were, perhaps, a bit beyond him.

Although medieval in origin,

the building has had many different uses throughout the years.

Now the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust has stepped in to preserve it.

This is quite an unusual space, isn't it?

What are we looking at here?

Well, this is the remains of the shop that was

converted from a merchant's house to a shop in about 1870.

How are you going to use this space

and what is the overall plan for the building?

The ground floor will be a gallery.

We haven't got a gallery in Great Yarmouth at the moment,

but we have a very vibrant art community.

We're also going to have artists' studios.

We'll have four artists' studios,

one of those will be a live/work unit.

And we're also going to have a three-bedroom residential unit.

So, hopefully we'll be able to attract a family to King Street,

so we'll get a rental stream from the artists' studios,

we'll get a rental stream from the residential unit

and that money will be ring-fenced to maintain the building.

Fantastic. So this is a sustainable project.

You're investing in it, but once it's invested in, it will keep

itself, keep ticking over

and keep maintained for hopefully generations to come.

In each era, from medieval times onwards, work has been

carried out on this building using the style and method of the period.

So the trick to conservation here is understanding what's gone before.

Darren, clearly there's a lot going on here. Talk me through it.

What do you know?

This is just one small section of wall in the whole building,

but it's a very interesting narrative going on,

which we haven't deciphered fully yet.

But you can see that you have a more crude way of constructing with

some beach pebbles,

you've got a random mixture of different types of brick here.

Some earlier bricks.

It's all about reusing materials,

which would have been done quite often in the past.

Literally cobbling together, yeah.

When you work out what you're going to do to conserve this, who does it?

Are there local tradespeople in Great Yarmouth who have

the skills to do this?

Well...no.

We have an acute skills shortage in Great Yarmouth.

It's a nationwide skills shortage in traditional building skills.

But in Great Yarmouth, it's particularly acute.

So, what we've been doing recently is concentrating on training, to build a

local workforce that can then repair buildings and maintain buildings.

What sorts of skills are we talking about?

We're teaching people about lime plastering, lime mortar,

masonry, flint knapping. A whole range of different skills.

So, it's a cycle.

We can continue repairing buildings,

and we can eventually use our own people to do the work.

You've got a lot on, haven't you?

But it is a very, very interesting project

and a very worthwhile building. Yeah.

First and foremost, it seems this project is fantastic

because it is saving this building.

Without that, this building may not have many more years left in it.

But, actually, there's so much more to this.

This is about investing in local people and the community.

The fact that unemployed people have been trained in

traditional skills is just brilliant.

Ultimately it means that the future of this building

and many others round here will be secured for generations to come.

Back in London, I'm with Ian and his partner, Marcie, who bought a large

Victorian house which they plan to restore and make energy efficient.

But, with a baby on the way and budget concerns,

they want to get it right first time.

So I'm going to introduce them

to a couple who've carried out a similar renovation.

This is the property I've brought you to see.

It's a Victorian house, a little bit older than yours.

I think 1874. It's been lovingly restored.

It's looking great at the moment. What do you think? It's massive.

It looks as though it's in great nick as well.

Yeah, and it really wasn't. It was in a very similar state to yours.

Plaster blown, ceilings falling in,

hadn't been updated or modernised in a long, long time.

So, it was a complete renovation

and they've done some really interesting things,

ones that I think you'll be particularly keen to learn about.

So, shall we go and say hello? Let's do that.

Chris Newman and Nettie Huntley from southeast London were keen to

put down roots and buy a family home.

But, with a shortage of affordable housing in London, they decided

that reviving an abandoned house was their best option.

In line with my business, I wanted to do a practical eco-renovation

because that's what I specialise in.

We also wanted to do something from a sort of stewardship of the planet

and an environmental reason.

We think that it's right that, if you can and you have the opportunity,

it's a very worthwhile thing for us, other people and our children,

to do the best we can with a property,

to reduce its CO2 emissions and its energy use.

We bought the house off a guy who'd been looking after his elderly

mum here, who had sadly died,

so he was here on quite a temporary basis

and was really just camping in one room, it seems.

The building was in such a state that Chris and Nettie were

initially refused a mortgage as the house was declared uninhabitable.

There was a lot of peeling paint.

As we got further down the line,

all the plaster had to be ripped out because it was crumbling everywhere.

all the plaster had to be ripped out because it was crumbling everywhere.

all the plaster had to be ripped out because it was crumbling everywhere.

all the plaster had to be ripped out because it was crumbling everywhere.

The decor was very, very old. So, it was in a bit of a state.

Wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

Chris is, by trade, a specialist in energy efficiency,

but despite this,

he and Nettie had no hands-on general renovation experience.

For us, the energy efficiency end of this renovation was the easy bit

because of Chris's expertise.

It was doing a renovation,

everything else that comes with it that was really, really challenging.

Choosing paint. Choosing paint has taken me a long time.

It's a bit of a bugbear.

Restoring and modernising an old building can become

life consuming but now it's behind them,

Chris and Nettie are thrilled with the outcome.

We're very proud of what we have achieved.

Hopefully, we aim to try and show people that you can...

Anybody can do this if they're doing it, especially if they're doing a big renovation.

The additional marginal cost is very small.

I think we estimate it's about 10% extra we spent on eco-uplift

and we've shown people that it doesn't have to look funny.

It can look like a normal, nice home at the end.

Chris and Nettie's experience should prove invaluable,

given the similar age of the building

and their shared ambition of making a Victorian house energy-efficient.

What is your first impression when you come through?

We've got a sitting room coming into a dining room coming into a kitchen extension

and out onto the garden.

It's a lovely, sweeping feel, isn't it? It's stunning. What a beautiful house.

I hope we get the same kind of sense of space in our house.

It's really, really lovely.

What was the plan?

Did you always know it was going to be three different spaces?

Or you wanted it all to be open? How did you think of it?

We wanted it to be pretty open. We wanted the ground floor.

Upstairs is on lots of different levels.

It's quite piecemeal, in that sense.

We wanted this space to just flow.

We were very clear about that from the start.

Am right in thinking you were pregnant at the time? I was.

I became pregnant just after we bought the house.

I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant.

And it was...

In retrospect, it's done now, so I'm glad it's done!

But we certainly asked for it. It was quite full-on.

Chris and Nettie spent 15 months

and ?100,000 on making this their perfect eco-home.

This is Ned's room, our youngest. Lucky Ned!

I know you're itching to learn about some of the environmentally friendly aspects of the house.

I think we can see those really well from outside.

Shall we step out there and you can tell us about them? Yeah.

You can see three different things on the top level that we've done.

On the side was a very difficult alley. There was a wall there,

which we couldn't externally insulate because the alley would get too thin.

We couldn't internally insulate the wall because the staircase is there.

Actually, we've enclosed it and removed it from the equation.

That is now a buffering zone.

The middle bit, we've externally insulated

and that's putting about ten centimetres

on the outside and rendering it.

That saves internal space but has brought that wall up

to about 50% better than current building regs.

The main bit of the house, where you can still see the bricks,

we've INTERNALLY insulated, to a similar standard.

So we've put it on the inside of the wall and then replastered

and tapered it where the windows are.

That's a lot of insulation. That's a big duvet round a house, isn't it?

It is a big duvet round a house, which is what we hope to do.

How has that brought your bills down?

Has it had a noticeable impact?

We haven't... We never actually lived in it before we did it.

But we were able to model it and do an energy master plan on the property.

We predicted, before we started, we were aiming for an 80% reduction.

We've only been in it one year and it was

one of the coldest winters on record.

But we've used around ?350 worth of gas.

In electricity, we get paid a lot more than we actually pay out.

So net, all our bills are negative to the tune of about ?300.

Whoa!

So you haven't paid anything for energy over that winter?

Correct. Yikes!

I should say at this point, Chris is a specialist in this.

This is why you are here, really.

This is your business, isn't it, Chris? You do this for a living.

I'd hoped you knew what you were doing. But that sounds incredibly successful.

We're pretty happy. Those bills we're hoping to get them even lower

because through that winter

we had the front door off on some of the really cold days, as we were replacing that.

There were still some holes because we were still working on it.

Lots of draft points have been sealed up.

We only put in a wood-burning stove partway through the winter.

Maybe next year, if it's not quite so cold,

we can get down to ?150 for the whole year.

How have you found this place?

How are you feeling about it all at the moment? It's inspirational.

It's really nice to see a project that's finished.

We're at the start of our project

and sometimes you can feel a bit overwhelmed by it.

But it's really nice to see that there is

an end product that we can look forward to moving into.

Hope. Hope. There is hope. Yeah!

Ian and Marcie's project is at a crucial point.

Yes, they've got planning permission but now is the time they have to decide exactly what they want,

nail down plans and work out how they're going to do it.

It's been brilliant to bring them to see this renovation.

Loads of inspiration, lots of ideas they hadn't even thought of.

And importantly, encouragement that their ambitious plans

for an environmentally-friendly house really can work.

I'm sure, before long, they'll have their perfect home.

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You ask us to get behind you and why should we?

You're punching above your weight, aren't you?

Tell me what's going on.