A letter written to local authorities at the end of July apparently indicates the government's intention to offer councils complete flexiblity over the level of discounts for empty homes and periods of time for which they could apply.
The letter states:
In particular authorities sought clarification on the flexibility to vary the level of discount over time (for example, allowing a discount to be applied for a period [of] a few months to benefit short-term empty homes, rather than removing it completely)
Ministers have carefully considered these representations. In keeping with the spirit of the proposed reforms, the Government intends to allow councils complete discretion over the level of council tax discount and the time-period for which it may apply to an empty home.
This would seem to allow for example a one week 100% discount to avoid billing trivial amounts, It is less clear whether different levels of dscount could be applied for different time-periods on a sliding scale eg from 100% to 50% to 0% (the letter refers to "the time-period" in the singular.
In a separate paragraph, the same letter goes on to clarify that the Empty Homes Premium will not affect New Homes Bonus:
This change will not affect the basis of calculation of the New Homes Bonus, which uses a six-month threshold to distinguish between short- term and long-term empty properties. Local authorities will need to ensure that they have the necessary internal procedures in place in order to collect the data necessary for those calculations, and the government will expect any local authority exercising such flexibilities to continue to collate accurate statistics to assist the New Homes Bonus calculations.
The letter can be retrieved via our Information Library from here.