Power to Penalise Owners of Empty Homes Goes Unused

Powers to penalise developers who leave homes empty for years are not being used, a BBC investigation has revealed. Councils are empowered to use the Empty Homes Premium to charge home owners 50% extra council tax if they leave properties empty for two or more years. Yet Freedom of Information requests to all 32 London boroughs discovered that seven councils did not apply the charge to a single property. There are currently more than 80,000 empty homes in the capital. The power to penalise property owners for leaving homes unused came in last April. Read more on the BBC website.

Council Tax: Empty Property – Parliamentary Written Answer

Steve McCabe: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for what reason the empty home premium starts when a property first becomes empty rather than when a property is bought with the intention of renovating and occupying it.  

Stephen Williams: The empty homes premium aims to reduce the total length of time for which properties are empty, not the length of time for which they are empty under a particular owner. Since the power came into effect on 1 April 2013, 239 councils in England have introduced the empty homes premium. The number of long-term empty homes fell by 38,009 between October 2012 and October 2013. Properties that are left empty due to the death of the occupier are exempt from council tax for up to six months after the granting of probate, or after letters of administration have been signed.

EHP Exceptions - Government Scraps "Genuinely For Sale" Proposal

The government has listened to the representations made by the Empty Homes Network and other organisations and decided that homes that are "genuinely for sale or rent" should not be included in the exceptions from the Empty Homes Premium. The Empty Homes Network argued strongly that such an exception was neither practical nor justified on policy grounds, given that an owner would have had 2 years in which to bring the empty home back into use. Read more on the Empty Homes Network website.

Government to Scrap Council Tax Reliefs

According to a story in the Sunday Independent, Andrew Stunell is expected to use the Empty Homes Network National Empty Homes Conference as the opportunity to announce the removal of empty homes discounts and exemptions as proposed during a consultation exercise in the Autumn.  The key measures are expected to be:

    *the removal of the 6 month exemption class "C" for unfurnished empties

    *the removal of the minimum 10% discount for second homes

    *the introduction of an Empty Homes Premium for homes empty longer than      2 years

The particular set of measures can be inferred from the "£420million" in the headline - this was the total calculated additional tax income if all the measures described in the consultation.  Read more on the Empty Homes Network website.