Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of long-term empty social housing units in (a) Surrey and (b) Surrey Heath constituency.

The number of empty social sector homes in England as of 31 March 2025 can be derived from published statistics for vacant dwellings owned by local authorities and private registered providers of social housing.

For local authorities, this data comes from Section E of the Local Authority Housing Statistics data returns, which can be found on gov.uk here. These include units vacant for more than six months as reported by local authority landlords. Note that not all empty social homes are available to let.

The full time series, which can be found on gov.uk here, contains vacant dwellings information collected since 1989–90. It will be updated to include the 2024-25 return in January/February 2026.

For Private Registered Providers, the Regulator of Social Housing collects and publishes the required information in the Private Registered Providers Data Release, which can be found on gov.uk here. Vacant unit data at local authority level is only collected from PRPs owning 1,000 or more social housing units. This dataset does not show how long units have been vacant; instead, it categorises them as temporarily or permanently unavailable. It is therefore not possible to distinguish between short-term and long-term empty homes. Additionally, PRP data is limited to vacant self-contained General Needs units only.

Information is not collected at constituency level.