Tax on empty buildings
Finally! This government has done SOMETHING right!
The legislation on tax on empty buildings has been changed so that owners will have to pay the full amount of tax instead of 50%. This obviously gives owners the incentive to find tenants for their properties. Hopefully this will reduce the number of properties standing empty in this country- criminal when you think of the amount of homeless or the apparent ‘housing shortage’ causing large development on greenbelt land.
There are around 289,000 long-term (over 6 months) empty properties in England alone. If these were brought back into use, then the pressure to build new houses would be eased somewhat.
Incidentally, I tried to find estimate figures for the number of homeless people in England and came up with nothing but confusing partial figures and statistics. If anyone can help with this, please let me know! I find it incredible that there isn’t somewhere with this information in plain English!