More than 2,000 homes in Weymouth and Portland and across West Dorset are sitting empty, despite a national housing crisis which has left thousands of families homeless.

And new figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show that hundreds of properties have been left unoccupied for at least six months.

In October last year, when the most recent count was taken, there were 1,376 vacant homes in West Dorset - one in every 38 houses in the area. Of those, 414 were classed as long-term vacancies, meaning that they had been unoccupied for at least six months.

The problem of empty homes in West Dorset has worsened in recent years. In 2008, despite the number of vacant properties peaking nationwide, there were just 1,244 in the area.

Meanwhile, there were 770 vacant homes in Weymouth and Portland - one in every 42 houses in the area. Of those, 230 were classed as long-term vacancies, meaning that they had been unoccupied for at least six months.

The problem of empty homes in Weymouth and Portland has improved in recent years. In 2008, when the number of vacant properties peaked nationwide, there were 820 in the area.

Across England, there were more than 600,000 vacant properties last October, over a third of which were long-term vacancies.

Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, said that making sure properties were occupied was just part of the answer to the country’s housing shortage.

She said: “In the midst of a homelessness crisis it is of course frustrating to see houses left empty. But the fact is that even if we filled every one of these, there still wouldn’t be nearly enough homes to solve the problem.

“Decades of failure to build has left us in the lurch - the Government must now get on and build a new generation of social homes where people need them most.”

Figures show that 493 new homes were built in West Dorset last year. In total, 613 new homes were created, including those converted from office blocks or houses split into flats.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “The number of long-term vacant dwellings in England is still lower than when records began, but we are determined to bring this figure down.

“That is why we are equipping councils with tools they need to tackle the issue head on, such as bringing forward legislation that will allow them to double the rate of council tax on those homes left empty for two years or longer.”

Polly Neate, chief executive of homeless charity Shelter, said: “Efforts to bring empty homes back into use is a positive thing but we must remember that even if every empty home was filled, it still wouldn’t solve our acute housing shortage.

“The real reason we’re in the midst of a housing crisis is decades of failure to build enough. The government must now urgently build many more properties that are genuinely affordable to rent to help solve our housing crisis and give families the homes they are crying out for.”

A spokesman for the the Empty Homes Agency, a charity which campaigns for empty properties to be brought back into use, said: “Local authorities with higher levels of long-term empty homes tend to have lower house prices and more households on lower incomes than the rest of England.

“The government has talked of the need to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s. We believe more could be done to generate that additional housing supply through homes that have sat empty over the long-term.”

But councils said that they are working hard to address the issue of long-term empty homes in their local areas.

Councillor Gill Taylor, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council’s spokesman for Housing, added: “We take a proactive approach to bringing empty properties back into use and have adopted a policy based on providing advice and information to owners.

“We explain the cost of leaving the property empty and the assistance that is available to help them to bring it back into use.

Councillor Tim Yarker, West Dorset District Council’s spokesman for Housing, added: “Councils do have enforcement powers, such as a compulsory purchase orders, to deal with empty properties which are used for the exceptional cases that cause real issues to a community.”

A Purbeck District Council spokesman, added: “There are many reasons why properties are registered as long term empty in Purbeck, for example those awaiting probate decisions or properties currently being redeveloped.

“Individual new developments also have a significant impact, in percentage terms, on the annual total in Purbeck as the district’s overall total is relatively small.”