NEARLY 2,000 private and council homes were left empty in Colchester last year despite thousands of people waiting to be housed.

A total of 1,916 homes in Colchester were empty as of April of which 125 were owned by Colchester Council.

The council discussed its annual authority monitoring report for between April 1 2021 to March 31 2022 at a meeting which also revealed 2,885 households were on its housing register at the end of the period.

The meeting heard some council properties were empty for the short term so they could be refurbished but said they had “less control” over the private sector.

Councillor Kayleigh Rippingale asked the meeting why so many homes were empty, particularly those owned by the council and whether they could be forced back into rental uses or sold on.

She said: “That’s quite a lot of properties that are empty that could be utilised to house families on our register and in desperate need of larger homes.”

The majority of the empty homes were short term with 1,008 empty for six months or less.

However, 62 were left empty for more than five years.

In addition, 382 were empty for between seven to 12 months, 327 between one to two years and 137 between two to five years.

Karen Syrett, lead officer for planning and place strategy, said: “There’s an emphasis to get those back into use as quickly as possible.

“We have less control, of course, over privately owned properties.”

Chairing the meeting, Martin Goss said figures on empty properties tend to be similar each year.

He said: “As a council we cannot force people to bring those properties back into occupation.”

He later said: “There’s always been some empty properties but a lot of that is down to vandalism and issues that the property needs to have maintenance done to it and obviously we don’t want to put people in properties that are not fit for purpose.”

The report revealed 1,034 new homes have been built during the period, alongside a population increase of 11.3 per cent since 2011.