Argyll and Bute Council was very keen to implement the change as soon as was practicable because our councillors had been lobbying for the change to be made in the first place. However, we took a year from the change in the definition of “second home” so that we could update our records to ensure that we had precise numbers of properties that met the new classification. We also wanted to give good advance warning to the people who were likely to be affected.
Early in 2013-14, we decided that we would implement the policy as soon as possible, and we took the decision to do so in August that year. We then spent a lot of time reviewing the accuracy of the council tax records. First, we reviewed the second homes to ensure that they met the new classification. Secondly, we reviewed other classifications of properties, particularly those where the subject address and the contact address were different and which had not been declared as being empty and had not had an non-occupancy discount at all. However, we suspected that no one was resident in some of those homes, so we reviewed all those properties too.
By November of 2013, we had a definitive list of properties that were likely to be affected by the introduction of the double council tax charge, so we were able to contact them all individually to give them advance warning and to ensure that they were able to tell us in good time whether they met the requirements of being actively marketed for sale or let before the double council tax charge came in on 1 April 2014.
We took that whole year to do preparatory work and to ensure that people were given the contact details of the council’s empty-homes officer so that they could work with them to ensure that as many as possible could remove their properties from the catchment of the double charge.
Over that period, we saw quite a change in classification of a number of properties. The council also put a considerable amount of money aside to assist empty home owners through loans and grants—we put £3 million from the strategic housing fund into a pot to provide a carrot to the owners to do something positive with their properties. That was important.
The policy implementation in Argyll and Bute was about bringing homes back into use, and not so much about raising additional money—although that is a welcome by-product. We positioned the policy to reduce the number of empty homes, to bring them back into use and to make more affordable properties available to local residents.