The organisers of the Autonomous Winter Shelter in Gray’s Inn Road [Guy Smallman/Instagram:@Guy.Smallman]

• YOUR front page report, (Don’t push us back out in the cold, and Comment, January 27) hits the nail on the head but omits to mention that all housing associations and Camden Council run at a level of empties at around the 1,000 mark.

For instance, I noted that Notting Hill Genesis were running at or around 900 recently. Many private companies can be even worse since they seem happy to “lay down” housing like bottles of claret to appreciate in value.

Private companies are harder to get at but municipal ones, HAs and councils, aren’t. They need to be named and shamed by being required to publish their “void levels” on a monthly basis.

If they don’t then the Honours Committee can be asked to suspend all honours to these sectors until they do. This would hurt them more than we might imagine. But the real solution would be legislation to impose a slashing capital tax on empty properties.

Subject to many exceptions, problematic probate issues etc, gratuitously empty buildings might be taxed at 20 per cent per year; in other words, in about five years the properties would be forfeit to a fund which could be used to build social housing.

PETER RUTHERFORD
Pandora Road, NW6