Office figures: Avison Young, The Big Nine Q2 2026 — Birmingham office vacancy 12.2%, up 80 basis points on the quarter; take-up 114,771 sq ft, 20% down on the first quarter. No floor-area figure for vacant space is published there. Map built 2026-10-09.
Every building a record says stands empty, one point per building: filter by type, size and how sure the evidence is, and open one to see who says so. “Opportunities” switches to the co-op lens: public land, conversion potential and projects already under way, every source as its own layer.
Birmingham publishes no list of empty business premises (no business-rates dataset on birmingham.gov.uk, data.gov.uk or the City Observatory, 9 Oct 2026) — a Freedom of Information request is the route, which only a person can send.
0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed
Check any building in Birmingham: could it become homes, and could the EHC model work there?
Buildings with evidence that they stand empty — a second source agrees, a public record names them, or we have checked them — ranked by a score you can read: co-op scale, daylight depth, a station nearby, a zone that allows homes, affordable land and an open route in. Checked buildings carry their result; nobody has visited them on site yet. Leerstandsmelder reports join the list when they sit in a large non-residential building and a second source agrees.
| Priority | Building | Floor area | Depth | Station | Conversion check | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 72 | Former Littlewoods Block On public land · Former Littlewoods Block · 1 other source nearby | 8,568 m² | 14.8 m | 313 m | A fit only | |
| 58 | Methodist Central Hall Distressed or stranded (named) · 1 other source nearby | 9,205 m² | 30.2 m | 469 m | A fit only | |
| 58 | Methodist Central Hall, Corporation Street, Birmingham Distressed or stranded (named) · Building or structure · 1 other source nearby | 9,772 m² | 30 m | 482 m | A fit only |
Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.
A closed department store and a landmark hall at risk sit on the main shopping street the council is replanning.
Risk: Owners and their development partners favour demolition and large mixed schemes; prices reflect city-centre land values.
The largest publicly owned brownfield sites near the centre, next to the Curzon Street station area.
Risk: Large plots for new building, tied to masterplans and the rail project; little to reuse as it stands.
A former hospital is being turned into homes, including a converted infirmary, on public land.
Risk: Homes England has already chosen its developer; a co-op would need to work with Vistry or a registered provider.
A publicly owned shopping centre is registered for hundreds of homes in the new local plan.
Risk: Preferred-options allocation only; the centre may still trade.
Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.
The council publishes its whole property register (9,704 assets) with locations; sites marked for disposal and premises recorded as 'former' are the places to ask the council's property team about a sale or lease to a co-op.
The team brought 340 empty homes back into use in a year, uses compulsory purchase as a last resort and sells homes it has taken through enforcement at auction; a co-op can report empty homes and ask to buy or manage them.
Anyone can ask the government to make a public body sell land or property that is empty or under-used with no plans for it; a co-op can use it on a council or NHS building found on the radar.
Homes England sells land by the number of homes a site can take; sites under 70 homes go through routes open to small and medium-sized builders, which a co-op with a development partner can enter.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
The former Rackhams department store closed for good in June 2026; Sphere Group lodged an EIA scoping request for 650 homes and 380,000 sq ft of offices on the Legal & General site.
Vacancy rose 80 basis points in the second quarter of 2026 and take-up fell to 114,771 sq ft.
7,060 homes empty for more than six months in October 2025 (5,406 a year earlier) out of 14,473 empty homes; the council itself had 1,177 empty homes in March 2025.
Council-tax records show about 5,200 privately owned homes empty for at least two years; the Empty Homes Team brought 340 back into use in a year.
Homes England entered a building lease with Vistry; the former infirmary is to be converted into 52 flats.
19 sources connected, 1 waiting for access. We only use data we may lawfully reuse; where a publisher blocks automated access we do not work around it — a person downloads it, or we ask for permission.
| Source | Access | Records | Status | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 263 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap) OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Building heights: GlobalBuildingAtlas (TU Munich) Zhu, X. X., Chen, S., Zhang, F., Shi, Y., Wang, Y. (2025), Technical University of Munich GlobalBuildingAtlas: an open global and complete dataset of building polygons, heights and LoD1 3D models. Earth System Science Data 17(12), 6647–6668, doi:10.5194/essd-17-6647-2025. Read from the Parquet copy on Source Cooperative. Satellite-derived heights (typically 1.5–3 m error in Europe), turned into storeys with storey heights fitted on Berlin; used only where no register or official 3D model sizes the building. | Open download | 426 buildings sized | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL |
| Storeys where nothing better sizes the building: EUBUCCO v0.2 EUBUCCO (TU Berlin / ai4up) EUBUCCO v0.2, ODbL 1.0 — Birmingham has no open register or 3D model with storeys. Used only for buildings nothing else sizes: storeys mapped in OpenStreetMap, else EUBUCCO’s own estimate. | Open download | 8 buildings sized | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 |
| Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden) European Environment Agency | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | EEA standard re-use policy (attribution) |
| Leerstandsmelder.de — public reports of empty buildings Leerstandsmelder (Gängeviertel e.V., Hamburg) Shown while we ask Leerstandsmelder for permission. Reports since 2016 only, with the address, the month reported and a link to each entry; not checked by EHC. Each point says when a report has since been marked demolished, lived in, in interim use or rebuilt on Leerstandsmelder, and the owner type the reporter gave (private owners are never named). | Asking for permission | 0 | Pending 2026-10-09 | Credited to Leerstandsmelder.de; asking for permission |
| Open-ended property funds: buildings they report partly empty Open-ended real-estate funds (each point names its fund and report) German and Austrian open-ended public property funds must list every property with its vacancy (or letting) rate in their annual and half-year reports. scripts/reuse/import-fund-reports.ts reads those lists; properties at 10 % vacancy or more are shown, those at 25 % or more count as evidence. | Open download | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Published fund report (KAGB / KARBV property list), cited per point |
| Co-working spaces, department stores, banks, hotels and cinemas listed as permanently closed Overture Maps Foundation (closure data: BrightQuery company records) Places with operating_status "permanently_closed" in the monthly Overture release, read by scripts/reuse/import-overture-closures.ts and matched to the building they sit in. A closed business is usually one unit; names are shown only for companies, never for sole traders. | Open download | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | CDLA Permissive 2.0 (Overture Maps Foundation) |
| Land without current use and stalled construction, mapped from satellite imagery (Copernicus Urban Atlas 2006–2018) European Environment Agency — Copernicus Land Monitoring Service Urban Atlas class 13400 (brownfields, demolition sites and gaps in the built-up area, 0.25 ha and up) compared across the 2006, 2012 and 2018 editions, so each plot says how long it has stood unused; plus construction sites (13300) already under way in 2012, and 2012 construction sites left unused by 2018. Read from the EEA's open ArcGIS services, the same way in every radar city. The 2021 edition (Copernicus Data Space) drops plots built on since 2018 where scripts/reuse/import-urban-atlas-2021.ts has been run. Points are context, never evidence of vacancy. | Open API | 108 | Live 2026-10-09 | Copernicus open data (© European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2006–2021, EEA) |
| Stalled construction and buildings held by insolvent developers EHC research (dated press and court sources per point) Signa, Adler/Consus and other developer insolvencies since 2022 and stalled sites, each with its latest dated status (src/scripts/data/reuse/stalled-projects.json; news leads from scripts/reuse/mine-news.ts are reviewed before they join). | EHC research | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Cited publisher per point |
| Church buildings the dioceses and regional churches plan to give up Catholic dioceses and Protestant regional churches (their building plans), via EHC research Buildings a church body’s published building plan or recent reporting names as to be given up, without church funding, for sale or lease, or profaned (src/scripts/data/reuse/church-plans.json and brussels-churches.json). | EHC research | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Cited publisher per point |
| Named buildings and sites from EHC research (each with its own source) European Housing Coop research | EHC research | 5 | Live 2026-10-09 | Facts cited to their publishers |
| Year built and listing: OpenStreetMap building tags OpenStreetMap contributors start_date / construction_date and heritage / listed_status of the OpenStreetMap outline a record is matched to, where no register answers. Read with the outline match, not a separate query. | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Council-owned premises recorded as former or closed Birmingham City Council — Council Owned Property Assets (City Observatory) | Open API | 15 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Council land marked as a disposal site Birmingham City Council — Council Owned Property Assets (City Observatory) | Open API | 10 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Publicly owned sites on Birmingham's brownfield land register Birmingham City Council's brownfield land register, collected by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (planning.data.gov.uk) | Open download | 61 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Other brownfield register sites without planning permission — Birmingham Birmingham City Council's brownfield land register, collected by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (planning.data.gov.uk) | Open download | 193 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Listed buildings and places of worship on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register — Birmingham Historic England — Heritage at Risk Register 2025 (Open Data Hub layers 2021–2025) | Open API | 23 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 (© Historic England 2026; contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026) |
| Offices of 1,000 m² and more with an energy certificate (non-domestic EPC) Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — non-domestic EPC register, Birmingham extract republished on Birmingham City Council's City Observatory | Open API | 650 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Office buildings mapped in OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 268 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Birmingham that stands empty or barely used; once we have checked it, it joins the map under “Reported by visitors (checked)”.
The other radars in the same country and the nearest beyond. All 134 cities in the atlas
The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.