More and more councils are looking into a significant untapped council tax resource in their list of empties – properties benefiting from council tax exemptions when they shouldn’t be. A great example is exemption “F”. There’s a three-limb test for eligibility for exemption “F”: if (a) the property owner is deceased; and (b) the property is unoccupied; and (c) no grant of representation to the estate of the deceased owner has been out for more than six months, the exemption is available. Otherwise, it’s not.
The immediate CT income win for councils who engage with us in this area is quick – and not only does the exercise reveal cases where CT should be being paid but isn’t, it also enables long term empties that people had given up on to be brought back into use. Here’s how it works:
Councils come to us with their lists of properties, all believed empty, all on the CT “F” list and ask us to check on the status of each property and report back as soon as possible. So, we ask three questions about each property:
Is the owner deceased?
Is the property unoccupied?
Is there any grant of representation to the estate of the deceased owner and if so is it older than six months
Immediate payoff
We do a lot of work for councils in this area and our research reveals up-to-date information that empty homes and CT teams don’t have before involving us. In a recent sample of roughly 200 addresses, we updated the councils concerned showing that more than 80 cases enjoying exemption “F” shouldn’t have been, because the grant of representation had been out for more than six months. In other cases the properties were occupied. In a few cases we found the owner very much still with us and one or two were living in care homes (so they could still be eligible for CT relief under exemption “E”) or the deceased sole occupant was a joint tenant and had left another joint tenant surviving. So the outcome was that the councils were able to bill for CT in a raft of cases where they hadn’t realised they could.
Side benefits
In a number of other cases from the same sample, we found that the grant of representation had been out for less than six months but the contact details of the responsible parties on the grant itself were super-helpful to the CT teams who could diarise to bill them once the six months was up, if the property hadn’t changed hands by then.
The working relationship between empty homes and council tax teams became closer, usefully enabling a freer flow of information both ways.
Where there was no evidence of anyone applying for probate, we identified and located the people eligible to do so and guided them through the process, enabling the estate of the deceased owner to be administered, the property to be sold and brought back into use.
X marks the spot
We are ready and waiting to do anything we can to help you BEHBIU* and bring into your council unclaimed CT to which it is entitled as of right. We have UKGDPR-compliant datasharing templates, your Information Governance colleagues might want our input into a DPIA (we do that all the time) and your legal department might have questions and we have the answers to satisfy them. We can help you navigate this and anything else you need to do this. Who’s in?!
*you know – Bring Empty Homes Back Into Use
Nick Beetham is Business Development Manager at Fraser and Fraser. You can reach him via nickbeetham@fraserandfraser.co.uk and on 07850 739812 / 020 7832 1400