Stop second-home council tax discounts, says Shelter

6 Apr 11
The council tax discount enjoyed by second-home owners in England should be scrapped, the housing charity Shelter said today.
By Vivienne Russell


6 April 2011

The council tax discount enjoyed by second-home owners in England should be scrapped, the housing charity Shelter said today.

The group claimed ending the discount for the 252,000 second homes would raise up to £42m, which should be invested in new homes.

English councils can reduce council tax for second-home owners by up to 50%. A fifth currently offer this discount and four-fifths offer 10% off.

Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb said: ‘With government cuts of more than 60% to the budget for new homes, we need to explore every possible way in which existing housing stock can be used to ease our desperate shortage of affordable homes.

‘The council tax discount is effectively a tax break for people with second homes which often lie empty for large parts of the year. Enabling councils to respond to local housing pressures and charge the full rate of council tax, or higher, would mean they could raise vital revenue that could be used to deliver affordable housing for local people.’

The report, Taking stock, also examines some of the barriers to using long-term empty and under-occupied housing stock. Empty homes are mostly concentrated in the north of England, while the greatest housing need is in London and the Southeast.

Shelter said some action could be taken to address this, including raising the tax threshold for householders who rent out rooms, giving under-occupiers an incentive to take in lodgers.

Robb said: ‘While there is a range of measures we can use to get more from the housing stock that we have, the reality is that this is drop in the ocean compared with the scale of housing need.

‘There is simply no escaping the fact that building significant numbers of new homes is the only way to solve our housing crisis.’

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