A Yougov poll on behalf of the Homeowners Alliance shows that the second most popular housing policy, amongst those currently put forward by the major parties leading up to the election, is Labour's policy to allow councils to charge more council tax on empty homes.
Survey results
The most popular policy, with 80% for and only 3% against was "Require homes to be marketed in the UK first" (the other 17% of the responses are "don't knows" or "neither agree nor disagree"). This is a Conservative policy that is mainly relevant (practically, not politically) in London. There is a possibility that this might be more appropriately regarded as an "immigration/xenophobia-related" issue rather than truly a housing issue as it is certainly not a widespread problem around the country and even in London tends to affect only the most expensive homes that few in the population could afford even if marketed in the UK first (see an blog post in the Guardian for some discussion of this). This interpretation is somewhat supported by the fact that the region showing strongest support for this policy was the whiter-than-white South West with 89% "for". If this is a live issue day-to-day in the South-West it has somehow escaped the notice of the media.
Be that as it may, the second most popular policy is "Higher council tax for homes left empty", a Labour policy, with 70% for and 13% against.
The third most popular policy is additional council tax on homes worth over £2million (NB this is NOT the fabled mansion tax, where the receipts go to the government) (68% for, 11% against).
Labour risks ambush
Labour and empty homes practitioners can take heart from the importance attached by the survey respondents to the empty homes issue. But Labour risks being ambushed unless it comes out with a clear alternative to the New Homes Bonus as an incentive for local authorities to tackle empty homes.
NHB has been credited by the National Audit Office with successfully incentivising local authorities to do more about empty homes, yet Labour is now committed to abolishing it. That would be all well and good (given the widely-perceived downside of NHB as an incentive for new housebuilding ) if Labour came out with an alternative for empty homes, such as the one floated by us in our policy document (see p.9 Incentives For Councils and Endnote 27). As it stands, however, it will not be hard for one of the other parties - particularly one of the Coalition partners - to point to their own record, which involves not only council tax changes but targeted funding streams and NHB incentives, and to cast Labour's single proposal as pretty anaemic. More specifically, they can say that there could be more empty homes under a Labour administration because of its determination to abolish a measure (ie. NHB) that is documented as helping bring empties back into use. Labour doesn't currently have an answer to this criticism and its vulnerability is exacerbated by the fact that it is the only party (as far as we know) that is committed to a policy likely to undermine efforts to tackle empty homes: it can therefore be attacked from any political direction.
The survey
Full details of the survey can be found on the HomeOwners Alliance website here. There were 2184 respondents.