The North London Sub-Region (NLSR) is made up of six boroughs: Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, Islington and Westminster.

The London Housing Board (2006-2008) has allocated £3.375m to the NLSR to tackle empty properties. We aim to bring 310 units back into use during this period.

The Greater London Authority's report on empty homes in London 2005/06 emphasised sub-regional working as a useful means to achieve these targets. In particular it noted economies of scale and sharing of specialist skills and knowledge. The sub-regional empty property initiative complements the existing work being carried out by each of the individual boroughs to combat empty properties.

According to the 2005 figures, the current estimate of long term empty properties (over 6 months) in the NLSR is 9,004 - 23% of the London total. This is the second highest number of empty properties of the five sub-regions.

In 2005 in London 36,164 private homes were empty for longer than six months. This represents about 1.6% of the total private sector housing stock. The London Housing Strategy aims to reduce this to 1% by 2016, equivalent to 24,000 empty homes of the current stock levels.