One of the issues that we had not fully bottomed out prior to this year's Council Taxbase figures being collected and released was what would happen to properties that were previously Exemption Class "A" and were empty for more than 6 months at the time of the CTB return. Were they going to swell the number of long-term empties and thereby reduce the amount of New Homes Bonus?
The answer proves to be "yes" and "no". They have been added to the numbers of long-term empty dwellings (Line 16 on the CTB analysis) but they have not been included as long-term empties for the purposes of New Homes Bonus. There were 16,550 of these ex-exemption-A properties across the country. There were 33,622 exemption A properties on the 2012 CTB returns, which suggests that most of them had tended to receive the exemption for the full 12 months (2 x 16,550 = 33,100).
(Exexmption Class A has now been converted to Class "D" under the Council Tax (Prescribed Classes of Dwellings) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/2964).)