Council tax 'empty property premium' to be doubled in new housing initiative

Owners of empty homes will have to pay more council tax on their long-term vacant properties under a new drive to bring scores of them back into use.

Currently there are more than 270 houses in Rochdale which have been empty for two years or longer, and owners are charged an empty property premium of 50%.

Rochdale Borough Council is expected to approve a proposal to ramp the premium to 100% when cabinet members meet later this month.

This means that properties empty for over 2 years will be subject to council tax of 200%.

A council report says long-term vacant properties have a ‘negative impact on surrounding homes and areas’.

And it adds that doubling the ‘empty property premium’ could play an important part in making the best use of the borough’s housing stock.

Councillor Daalat Ali, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Planning, Development & Housing, says he is passionate about bringing empty homes back into use.

He said: “We have got a policy to bring several homes back into use. I’m really pushing for that.

“There’s so much homelessness and so much demand for people to live somewhere and we have these empty properties just sitting there. It’s not on.

“We are really pushing for it and do want to bring these back into use.”

In 2013 the government gave councils the ability to set their own council tax rates for empty properties.

Since bringing in a 50% premium, the number of unoccupied dwellings in the borough has dropped from 552 to 271.

And when implemented, the increased empty property premium is expected to bring even more back into use - as well as generating an extra £150,000.

And Councillor Ali says that while this is a relatively modest amount, the policy would go ‘a long way’ to address problems of homelessness and overcrowding.

“It will create the right housing for some very needy people,” he said, adding that tackling the issue was part of the council’s ‘wider responsibility to the community’.

The report went before the council’s corporate overview and scrutiny committee this week.

Councillor John Hartley told members about a dilapidated house in his Littleborough Lakeside ward which had gone to ‘rack and ruin’, before the authority brought it up to an inhabitable standard.

And he asked chief finance officer Victoria Bradshaw if the council could recover money from owners of long-vacant properties after carrying out refurbishments.

Ms Bradshaw said that options include a charging order on properties, to charge the owner on enforced sale or, where homes have been empty for a considerable length of time, buy them using the authority’s compulsory purchase powers.

Councillor Michael Holly raised concerns that those who have failed to sell a property through no fault of their own could end up being penalised.

But Ms Bradshaw said that the council could show discretion and these decisions were in turn scrutinised by the cabinet.

Councillor Carol Wardle told the meeting she believed this was the right approach in some circumstances.

She explained how one resident had been unable to sell her late mother’s flat despite doing ‘everything she could’.

The council then agreed to take the monies from the sale of the house once the sale was completed.

“We can’t ask people for money they simply have not got,” she added.

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporter