Empty houses, flat, shops, workshop, garages
Case reference FOI2026/01599
Received 30 July 2026
Published 5 August 2026
Request
Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 please could I request a list of Information Request:
Please provide a full list of all the empty houses, flat, shops, workshop, garages within and across Guildford Borough council areas. Please also provide/ include any and all derelict buildings, houses and flats.
Please include any and all legally applied information which may include but not limited to: the last date of occupancy, ownership details, outstanding charges or fees and any required detrimental information.
Response
Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please find the answers to your queries below:
Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 please could I request a list of Information Request:
Please provide a full list of all the empty houses, flat, shops, workshop, garages within and across Guildford Borough council areas. Please also provide/ include any and all derelict buildings, houses and flats.
Information regarding business premises available for rent is available on our website via the following link:
https://www.guildford.gov.uk/lettings
Information regarding social housing that is currently available to let in the borough is also available via our website, through the following link:
https://guildford.housingjigsaw.co.uk/atlas/search-results
Information regarding Guildford Borough Council’s vacant housing stock is publicly available information, which can be found via the following website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-housing-data
Please refer to the tables titled ‘Local Authority Housing Statistics Regional and Local Authority data’ for each year and ensure that you refer to the ‘Local Authority Data’ and ‘Data Dictionary’ tabs within each table, to determine what each column of the table refers to. Specifically, please note that you can find information in relation to vacant Local Authority dwellings in Guildford in the ‘Local Authority Data’ tab at row 106 and between columns e1a and e4d.
Additionally, information regarding Guildford Borough Council’s vacant housing stock is also published in our regular Housing Operation Board Reports, which are available via the following website:
https://democracy.guildford.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CommitteeId=1376
In particular, please see the Agenda Reports Pack attached to each separate meeting date and search for ‘empty properties’ within each one to find details of the numbers of vacant properties.
As such, the information you require can be found from publicly available sources and consequentially under Section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible.
Finally, please note that we do not provide detailed information about our vacant properties – this part of your request is exempt under Section 31(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act (where disclosure would, or would be likely, to prejudice the functions of law enforcement in the prevention and detection of crime), because Guildford Borough Council believes that release of this information would increase the likelihood of break in, burglary and/or trespass at the properties in question.
Please include any and all legally applied information which may include but not limited to: the last date of occupancy, ownership details, outstanding charges or fees and any required detrimental information.
Unfortunately, our system does not have the capability to report on this data and it would involve combing through each of the individual cases of vacant property manually to search for the relevant information within the case notes. There are currently 282 void council houses, in addition to approximately 450 vacant garages, plus further vacant business premises – assuming it would take approximately 7 minutes to find the details you have requested of each individual property, this would take the equivalent of at least 85.4 hours (5,124 minutes) to obtain this information. Therefore, due to limitations in our software we do not hold this information in a searchable format and it would take us over 18 hours to obtain this data, which would place a substantial and possibly unreasonable burden on resources. This part of your request is therefore exempt under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act (where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit).
Yours sincerely,
FOI Team
Guildford Borough Council
Documents
This is Guildford Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.