Campaigners behind the National Empty Homes Week – running until March 5 – are accusing some second home owners of “flipping” properties to become permanent short lets.
As a result, those owners would pay business rates rather than more expensive council tax.
The claim comes from the Action on Empty Homes group which says official figures show around 250,000 properties in England have stood empty for more than six months, while another 207,000 empty homes are covered by exemptions and do not pay any council tax.
That means thew official total vacancy now stands at over 686,000 but the campaigners say this isn’t the full picture as this “excludes a further 257,000 so-called ‘second homes’ or ‘furnished empties’ and over 70,000 second homes flipped to paying business rates as permanent short-lets.”
The campaigners claim that this means there are over 1m homes in England with no residents.
Action on Empty Homes now wants the government to strengthen Empty Dwelling Management Order powers and remove the need to prove vandalism, anti-social behaviour or dangerous dereliction are associated with an empty home before action can be taken.
It also want a new nationally-funded Empty Homes Programme with funding devolved to local councils so they can choose the right mix of ‘stick and carrot’ measures to deal with their local empty homes.
The campaign also raises the issue of second homes. It says: “One owner can own as many ‘second homes’ as they like and does not have to prove use of them as a ‘second home’, nor pay council tax penalties for leaving them empty and unused. So are these all 257,000 ‘second homes’ actually holiday homes?”
It says these are unlikely to all be holiday homes as thousands are in cities like Bradford or Leicester, and because many holiday homes let commercially are registered for business rates and fall outside this data.
Action on Empty Homes want the UK government to apply to England similar rules to those now under consideration in Scotland and Wales where short lets are to have some for of licensing and/or require planning consent.
Director of Action on Empty Homes Rebecca Moore says: “There are over one million homes without residents in England and there are hundreds of thousands of people in housing need. We must act now and long-term empty homes and unused second homes – which make up over 530,000 of those homes without residents – are a good place to start.
“These are homes you can’t rent and you can’t buy but they could offer vitally needed housing. During a national housing crisis we cannot afford to see half a million homes stand empty because of the lack of a government strategy to support councils to bring them back into use.”
