THE new Labour government is determined to get Britain building again and has promised to construct 1.5m homes within the next five years.

This seems likely to put it on a collision course with local people who don’t want to lose their local open spaces.

And yet there are 261,000 long-term empty houses across the country, and 50,000 of them are in the North East where 1.4 per cent of houses have been unoccupied for six months or more. There are more than 10,000 in County Durham and nearly 2,000 in Darlington.

This doesn’t make much sense. It is, literally, a waste of space.

Until 2015, the Government ran an Empty Homes Programme which quite successfully filled 50,000 empty properties and drove the total long-term empty number under 200,000. But the programme finished, and now the numbers are rising again.

It shows with a bit of determination, and some money, these properties can be repurposed. Councils can use compulsory purchase to take them over and then do them up – or even offer them for just £1 to someone who guarantees to restore them.

Not only will this help address the housing shortage, it will boost economic activity and save a few acres of green land. Plus, empty houses are a blight on their communities, dragging their area down as they become a magnet for crime. Renewing one empty house begins the turn-around of a district.

Councils are doing what they can with the resources available to them.

The Government talks of changing the planning system such is its determination to get Britain building. Perhaps it should also put a bit of oomph behind a new empty home programme to get Britain’s existing buildings back in use.