Professor John Robertson OBA
From Minister for Housing correspondence and empty homes statistics: FOI release published today, we can see that in 2024, there were 65 144 empty second homes, down 7 % from 70 278 in 2023 and 43 538 properties empty for 6 months, down 7% from 46 217 in 2023.
This change is largely due to:
Powers enabling Councils in Scotland to apply either, a 50% Council Tax discount, the standard rate, or an up to 100% council tax premium (double the rate) on second homes came into force in April 2024. 30 local authorities have introduced the premium in some form as of September 2024.
Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400438694/
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Brilliant, this must be extended. Too many non doms in Scotland, it has to be curtailed if not mostly stopped, same ‘airB&B’ there are apparently at least 16k of those in Edinburgh, that’s huge and the UK HQ’d Labcons/Tory/Libdems Edinburgh coalition council won’t be regulating that in any significant way anytime soon.
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And don’t I just know it as a somewhat obscure aside, I’m not only in favour of it, I’d go WAY further than the current arrangements of a 100% premium and hope SG have the bottle to do more.
For far too long the low level of CT in Scotland has been abused (even more so in Wales) with property being bought out from under locals, then left vacant as the increasing value in the shrinking market reaps huge profits and tax benefits, as well as pushing rentals into frankly stupid money – We’re no longer living in an age of reasonable aspirations to own your own home in your own locale being possible at a reasonable price because those with deeper pockets and convoluted business plans have greater borrowing powers than you. It’s all a horribly complicated mess to unravel, but this initiative was a damned good start.
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Scottish Councils could be allowed to increase year on year.
Up to 6 months 0%
up to 12 months 50%
up to 2years 150%
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contd.
up to 3 years 200%
increasing by xx% per year thereafter .
dottieb
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I think the Scottish Government factored this change to Council Tax help to increase the availability of housing when they had no option but reduce the amount of spending on the building of new homes for social rent due to Tory austerity.
Sorry for going off topic.
Today BBC Wales is reporting hospital patients being treated in corridors is “becoming the norm”.
On 12 January 2025 Nation Cymru reported.
https://nation.cymru/news/tories-hit-out-at-welsh-government-over-reduction-in-hospital-beds/
“Stats Wales figures show that the average number of daily available beds in the Welsh NHS has dropped from 14,723 to 10,446 since Labour came to power in the Senedd in 1999.”
Would love to know Labour’s excuse.
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News you won’t hear.
The SNP proposed a Scottish Futures Trust in their 2007 election manifesto. The Scottish Government owns the SFT which they established in 2008. It is an independent, arms-length company that works with the public and private sectors to maximize the benefits of infrastructure projects.
https://outcomes.scottishfuturestrust.org.uk/
“To further demonstrate the impact of our work, we produced this website with our ten outcomes detailed below.
Within each of the outcomes, we have listed a number of facts and figures that reflect the quantitative impact our work is having.
And across the ten outcomes, we have added 23 more case studies (on top of the 101 from the previous three years) that reflect the difference being made from the many different infrastructure projects and programmes we lead on and manage across Scotland.
By clicking on any of the ten outcome icons below, case studies will appear that not only meet one or more of our outcomes, but also deliver on our corporate priorities.
An assurance report on this work was carried out by RSM UK, an audit, tax, and consulting adviser.”
For example, by clicking on Tile 7 you find out
“Public asset condition and performance is improved through more effective whole-estate management and maintenance
During 2023/24:
The impact of our work alongside that of our partners in this area, is further illustrated through this selection of case studies.”
Clicking on one of the numerous case studies takes you to a two-page info pdf
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Only me. I forgot to log-on. 😳
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