Question reference: S6W-01075
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 28 June 2021
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Current status: Answered by Shona Robison on 22 July 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many homes have been recorded as unoccupied in each year since 2007, broken down by local authority area.
Answer
Scottish Government annual statistics on the number of long term empty properties and unoccupied exemptions are published at
Housing statistics quarterly update: December 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ,
with detailed local authority level Excel tables with figures from 1996 to 2020 available at Housing statistics: Empty properties and second homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .
These figures are sourced from the Council Tax Base data return, and relate to properties on the Council Tax Valuation List as at the first Monday in September each year.
Since 2007, the number of long term empty properties in Scotland has increased from 20,328 properties to 47,333 in 2020. However some of the rises across this period, particularly across 2013 to 2015, will have been due to reclassification exercises which local authorities carry out from time to time, or issues with management information systems, rather than being real changes in the numbers of long term empty properties.
The 16% (6,370 properties) increase in the number of long-term empty properties over the latest year between September 2019 and September 2020 is likely to be associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which directly affected both the property rental and sales markets, with the movement restrictions in place also having a range of other impacts.
The most recent annual data as at September 2020 shows that the local authorities with the highest number of long-term empty properties include the City of Edinburgh (7,152 properties), Aberdeen City (4,537 properties), Glasgow City (3,536 properties), Aberdeenshire (3,167), and Fife (2,943).