Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I will be careful not to stray too far from my brief, but the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), who has responsibility for housing and homelessness, is actively looking into appropriate regulation in the private rented sector and the potential introduction of a single housing ombudsman, among other things. I should point out that the Government introduced measures to tackle rogue landlords and, indeed, created a rogue landlord database and a new set of penalties to tackle the issue. I hope that the hon. Gentleman finds some comfort in that and will wait for my colleague’s findings on the general regulation of the private rented sector.

Before 2013, councils could not collect any council tax from properties that were empty for up to six months, so the coalition Government at the time decided to support councils and ensure that they had the freedom, should they want it, to charge the full rate of council tax on such properties. That same year, the Government enabled local authorities to charge a council tax premium of up to 50% on long-term empty homes.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the Minister’s comments. There are a number of empty properties in my constituency that I would very much like to see come back on the market. Will the Minister tell us what effect the Government’s action has had in this policy area? By what proportion has the number of empty homes come down since the Government made those changes?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that the powers that were introduced in 2013 have been taken up by around 90% of all local authorities, all but three of which applied the full 50% rate. I am glad to tell him that the number of long-term empty properties subject to a premium has fallen by 9% among those councils that have used the power every year since 2013.

There are carrots as well as sticks. Our new homes bonus scheme gives local authorities the same financial reward for bringing an empty home back into use as for building a new home. We have allocated £7 billion in new homes bonus payments to local authorities since 2011. Following those interventions, the number of properties that are empty for six months or longer is down by a third since 2010, from 300,000 to just over 200,000.

It is worth touching on one or two local authorities that have done a particularly impressive job of tackling the scourge of long-term empty properties in their areas. Several years ago, Bolton had close to 3,000 empty properties, but now has fewer than half that number. Bolton Council offered interest-free loans to bring a long-term empty property up to a suitable standard for rental. The council has also introduced an online matchmaker scheme that matches empty-home owners with potential buyers and offers advice about how to rent out properties through the Bolton landlord accreditation scheme. Between March and October of last year alone, more than 300 long-term empty properties were brought back into use. The council has recently joined forces with Bolton College and the University of Bolton on a new pilot project to bring a rundown empty house back into use.

Kent is another example of a local authority on the cutting edge of tackling this issue. Several years ago, Kent County Council launched the “No Use Empty” programme to bring empty homes back into use. Loans available through the scheme are repayable over five years and then recycled for further use. The scheme has now administered loans totalling almost £20 million, unlocking investment from owners totalling a further £20 million, and has returned over 5,000 empty homes back into use over the past decade. Notably, the programme ran a £3 million project to deliver new homes on the site of a former pub in Herne Bay that had been empty for five years following a fire. The pub’s conversion was undertaken in partnership with a local developer, which bought the property and applied for a loan from the “No Use Empty” fund to unlock the redevelopment. The project has now delivered 14 new apartments.

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[Alex Burghart]

I sorry to ask the Minister this question; it is ignorance on my part. How do councils ascertain that properties are empty? Might we need to give councils additional powers so that they can identify which properties are truly empty?

[Rishi Sunak]

That is a very thoughtful question. Every council takes a slightly different approach. An interesting method is to offer a temporary discount on empty homes for a short period of time, providing a financial incentive for homeowners to register their home as empty. Down the line, the council then has a list of properties that might become long-term empty. Of course, councils also require people to fill out forms, and there are civil and criminal penalties for filling them out with false or misleading information. Indeed, the authority also has other intelligence from the various other ways in which it touches an individual property. Together, councils can build up a picture of which homes are long-term empty, and apply the appropriate premium as and when necessary.

Hon. Members may be interested to know that the proportion of dwelling stock across the country that has been empty for six months or longer is about 0.85%, with the lowest numbers being found in London and the south-east, and the highest being found in the north-east and the north-west.