Office figures: BNP Paribas Real Estate, Q2 2026 — Central London availability 22.8 million sq ft (about 2.12 million m², converted), vacancy 8.4%, below the five-year average of 10.4%. Homes: our economic model’s conversion engine. 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.
Empty homes are published only as borough totals (council tax base); there is no building-level open register of empty homes or offices.
0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed
Check any building in London: 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 78 | Church of the Holy Cross, Cromer Street, Camden Town Distressed or stranded (named) · Place of worship · 2 other sources nearby | 2,550 m² | 15.8 m | 353 m | A fit only | |
| 78 | One Lamp Standard in front of the Star of the East Public House, Commercial Road Distressed or stranded (named) · Building or structure · 1 other source nearby | 3,385 m² | 12.4 m | 344 m | A fit only | |
| 72 | St Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill Distressed or stranded (named) · Building or structure · 1 other source nearby | 1,936 m² | 14.2 m | 307 m | A fit only | |
| 71 | Medical Centre (Building 24), Hounslow Barracks, Beavers Lane Distressed or stranded (named) · Building or structure · 1 other source nearby | 3,903 m² | 11 m | 643 m | A fit only | |
| 68 | Church of St Pancras, Upper Woburn Place, Camden Distressed or stranded (named) · Place of worship · 23 other sources nearby | 6,245 m² | 21.4 m | 293 m | A fit only | |
| 68 | Church of St Clement Danes, Strand, Westminster Distressed or stranded (named) · Place of worship · 2 other sources nearby | 5,787 m² | 20.9 m | 238 m | A fit only | |
| 66 | 3, Endsleigh Street Distressed or stranded (named) · Building or structure · 2 other sources nearby | 2,344 m² | 17.7 m | 322 m | A fit only | |
| 66 | 10-11, Lancaster Gate Distressed or stranded (named) · Building or structure · 1 other source nearby | 1,908 m² | 8.1 m | 234 m | B fit only | |
| 66 | Church of St George the Martyr, Queen Square, Holborn Distressed or stranded (named) · Place of worship · 8 other sources nearby | 2,272 m² | 20.7 m | 259 m | A fit only | |
| 65 | Church of St Mary the Virgin, Eversholt Street, Somers Town Distressed or stranded (named) · Place of worship · 1 other source nearby | 2,163 m² | 21.4 m | 280 m | B fit only |
Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.
The one borough that publishes its empty business premises with a location, next to large rail and public land at Euston.
Risk: Empty units are shops and office floors inside occupied buildings; Euston's land depends on the rail project.
The most office-to-home prior approvals of any borough and 45 publicly owned brownfield sites around the town centre.
Risk: Permitted-development conversions have produced small, poor homes; quality depends on the scheme.
The council's own estates and town-centre sites dominate its brownfield register, with the largest capacities in London.
Risk: Most sites are estate renewal — demolition and rebuilding of council homes — rather than reuse of empty buildings.
Rail and NHS land registered as publicly owned brownfield, with large capacity estimates.
Risk: The hospital is in use and the station land is operational railway; both need the public owner to release land.
More publicly owned brownfield sites than any other borough.
Risk: Many are small or operational sites; the register does not say which are vacant.
Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.
The Mayor's programme brings small public sites to market with standard contracts for small builders and community-led groups; two of the first ten TfL sites (Cable Street, Tower Hamlets — 42 homes; Christchurch Road, Lambeth — 20 homes) were earmarked for community-led, 100% affordable housing.
Boroughs identify public sites and run a bid to choose a community-led partner, who takes the site and develops permanently affordable CLT homes; London CLT had a pipeline of more than 100 homes on public land in January 2026 and publishes its site requirements for landowners.
Every borough keeps a register of land suitable for housing that records whether a public authority owns it. Publicly owned sites without permission are the first places for a co-op or CLT to ask the borough about disposal or a joint scheme.
Offices and other commercial premises can become homes through prior approval rather than a full planning application; London boroughs approved more than 1,000 such applications recorded in the Planning London Datahub. A co-op buying an empty office floor can use the same route, subject to the space and daylight standards.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
Since 2023, applicants have told London's boroughs that 782 sites with at least 150 m² of offices, shops, industry or other non-residential space were vacant when they applied; 866 sites have won prior approval since 2022 to become about 5,850 homes without full planning permission.
22.8 million sq ft available at the end of June 2026, slightly down on the quarter.
105,138 empty homes in London in 2025; those empty for over six months rose 138% since 2016 to 47,287.
Only 5,500 homes started in London in 2025 against a need of 88,000; 1 in 21 children lives in temporary accommodation.
Lewisham approved the conversion of the former Catford Police Station, empty since 2017, by a resident-led housing association.
Southwark approved 134 homes and a hotel in Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court, boarded up since 2020.
20 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 | 1,648 | 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 | 1,595 buildings sized | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL |
| 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 | 249 | 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 | 7 | 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) |
| Business premises charged as empty (void) — Camden business rates London Borough of Camden — Non-Domestic Rates, Charges and Reliefs (Socrata open data) | Open API | 3,008 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Business premises on the empty business-rates list — Barnet London Borough of Barnet — Business Rates Register & Empty Commercial Properties (open.barnet.gov.uk) | Open download | 524 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated (data.gov.uk record has none) — used with credit to the London Borough of Barnet |
| Business premises on the empty business-rates list — Hounslow London Borough of Hounslow — Business Rates quarterly report 2026/27 Q1 (data.hounslow.gov.uk) | Open download | 779 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Buildings declared vacant on a planning application (Planning London Datahub) Greater London Authority — Planning London Datahub (all 35 London planning authorities) | Open API | 782 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated on the Datahub or its London Datastore record — used with credit to the Greater London Authority |
| Approved conversions of offices, shops and other premises to homes (prior approval, 2022–2026) Greater London Authority — Planning London Datahub (all 35 London planning authorities) | Open API | 866 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated on the Datahub or its London Datastore record — used with credit to the Greater London Authority |
| Publicly owned sites on the boroughs' brownfield land registers Local planning authorities' brownfield land registers, collected by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (planning.data.gov.uk) | Open download | 594 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Other brownfield register sites without planning permission Local planning authorities' brownfield land registers, collected by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (planning.data.gov.uk) | Open download | 1,330 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 |
| Historic buildings at risk in London — SAVE Britain's Heritage's Buildings at Risk register SAVE Britain's Heritage — Buildings at Risk register | Open download | 1 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated — only the building's name, address, type, date added and a link to SAVE's page are kept (no descriptions or photos); credited to SAVE Britain's Heritage |
| Listed buildings and places of worship on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register Historic England — Heritage at Risk Register 2025 (Open Data Hub layers 2021–2025) | Open API | 500 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 (© Historic England 2026; contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026) |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in London 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.