Tackling empty homes 2025-2030 - Policy context

The National policy context

Since 2010 the Government has placed considerable emphasis on the importance of returning empty homes to use. Statistics published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government put the number of empty homes in England in October 2022 at 676,452. Of these 248,633 were classed as long-term empty homes (empty for longer than six months).

In 2018, Empty Homes, a national campaigning charity published a report entitled Empty Homes in England. This report identified an upward trend nationally for empty homes in 2018 after 10 years of a downward trend. It made several recommendations that have also been published in the House of Commons Briefing Paper No. 3012 June 2018, Empty Housing:

• local authorities should have an empty homes policy for their area, with the aspiration to reduce the number of long-term empty homes. 
   
• local authorities and social housing providers should seek funding and allocate resources to buy and refurbish empty properties for people in housing need.  
   
• local authorities should take a casework approach with owners of long-term empty properties to encourage, advise and support them to bring homes back into housing use. Employing dedicated empty homes staff can ensure that the council is able to act on information about homes, and build up expertise in working with owners, including taking enforcement action where necessary.  
   
• local authorities with concentrations of long-term empty homes should look at how they can support community-based neighbourhood regeneration approaches.  
   
• local authorities, particularly in high value areas, should conduct studies to understand the extent and impact of ‘buy-to-leave’ empty or hardly ever used. Where it is an issue, they should review the measures they could adopt to incentivise people to sell or rent those properties, or not to buy properties in the first place with the intention of leaving them empty or hardly ever used. 

Since April 2003, powers previously held by central government to vary the amount of Council Tax paid on some empty homes has been devolved to local level. The aim of this policy was to further incentivise the reoccupation of long-term empty homes by increasing Council Tax payable or by removing reductions or exemptions that were previously in place.

Local authorities are now able to decide whether to apply a discount for properties empty for up to six months and those properties empty and in need of considerable renovation. There is also the option of imposing an ‘empty homes premium’ whereby Council Tax levels are increased by a percentage depending on the length of time they have been empty.

Local policy context

There were 1,634 households currently on the housing register as of January 2025 and 32 homeless households in temporary accommodation arranged under our homeless responsibilities. The use of  empty homes that have been bought back into use can contribute to the demand for more homes of all 
types and help meet the community’s diverse needs.

This approach also contributes to objective 2 of the Housing Strategy 2020- 2025 which is concerned with supporting the most effective use of the 
housing stock in the district and bringing long-term empty properties back into use.

This approach contributes to Hart’s Local Plan which recognises the increasing pressure on housing needs in Hart. The implementation of this approach will support the Council’s intention to limit the pressure of new housing development on greenfield sites by encouraging owners to bring their empty properties back into use.