Figures suggesting there are 4% less houses to be demolished are “too good to be true”
I recently had the dubious pleasure of flying with a low-cost airline. Upon landing a quarter of an hour late at my chosen airport, the on-board PA system played a trumpet fanfare and a recorded voice announced that this was “yet another on-time flight”. Clearly sensing that the entire aircraft were looking bemusedly at their wristwatches, a very smug flight attendant explained that any flight landing within 15 minutes of the stated arrival time was considered punctual.
I was reminded of this fact-fudging, goalpost-shifting attempt at meeting stated targets when reading today’s response from the UK charity Empty Homes to the news that the number of homes lying empty had fallen by a number that stretches credulity to its very limit.
The charity sensibly says a four per cent drop in the number of vacant dwellings in England between 2009 and 2010 is too good to be true and that some of the biggest reductions occurred in areas with large numbers of homes due for demolition under the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) programme. In reality, many of these properties may remain standing for years because the coalition government ended the programme early, suggest the charity.
Quite rightly, the charity goes on to say that it is not accusing the government or the local authorities of falsifying figures; they have their credibility and charitable status to protect.
Here at Demolition News Towers, we have no such qualms.
A house that is in sufficiently poor and uninhabitable condition to have been earmarked for demolition remains worthy of demolition, regardless of whether or not it fits the incumbent government’s spending plans or acronym-labelled initiative. To suggest otherwise is a bare-faced lie, and one that undermines the drive to provide much-needed additional UK housing and which further damages the fragile recovery the UK demolition industry is currently experiencing.
I am certainly not the type to engage in conspiracy theories; I am sure that the six foot two blonde woman who walks and talks exactly like Osama bin Laden is purely a coincidence or a biological anomaly. But add this latest announcement to yesterday’s news that the government is planning a £30 million lifeline to people living in blighted areas where demolition has been halted rather than investing in the actual demolition itself, and it would be easy to believe that the coalition government was on an anti-demolition purge.
