Second homes

If your main home is not in the UK, but you own a property in the UK, you may need to pay the premium.

Any property you own in the UK will be eligible if it:

• is not your main home
• is furnished and
• is no-one’s main home

For council tax purposes you must state which property you consider your main home. We will not usually accept a claim that partners and families have their main homes in different places, unless you can prove that there are unusual circumstances.

If you and your partner say you live at different addresses, we will carry out further checks to verify any such claims.

We take any attempt to evade paying the premium seriously and we will check claims that a property is now occupied as a main home. 

We may ask you to provide further details such as:

• who your GP practice is
• the address used for your banking and tax affairs
• the address registered with the DVLA
• where any children attend school
• copies of utility bills/statements 

We may also make inquiries with credit reference agencies and other councils to validate your claim.

If your second home is on the housing market, you do not have to pay the premium for 12 months after you first put your property on the market. This applies if you list the property as for sale or to let.

The premium starts from 1 April 2025. If you put your property on the market before this date you will only be excepted from paying the premium for the balance of the 12 months from April.

For example, if you put your property on the market on 1 September 2024, you will have to start paying the premium from 1 September 2025.

The exception only applies from the first date you put your property up for sale or let, even if you take it off the market and relist it. 

For example, if you put your property up for sale on 1 September 2024, take it off the market between March and June 2025 and then put it back up for sale on 1 July 2025, you will still start paying the premium from 1 September 2025. You will also have to pay the premium for the time the property is not on the market (from April to June 2025).

If you rent out a furnished property, you will be liable for council tax during the periods when there is no tenant of the property. The charge will be the full council tax. 

We will not charge you a premium if:

• your last tenant held their tenancy for at least six months
• your property is available for let for tenants to use it as their main home

You do not need to apply for a premium exception for the vacant periods, we will assume that you will re-let the property. If this isn't the case, you must tell us. For example, if you decide to not market the property for let again when the previous tenants leave.

If you are a tenant of a furnished property, and move out before your tenancy agreement ends into another property, you may have to pay the second home premium.

We have made a decision to provide some protection for these tenants, where we provide a one month period where your tenancy can overlap across two properties.

For example, if you move out of a furnished let on 15 May 2025 but you hold the tenancy on the property until 1 June 2025, we will not charge you any second home premium. This is because the period between your moving out date and your tenancy end date is less than a month. We will still charge the full Council Tax rate for this period, but without any additional premiums.

But if you move out earlier, on 15 April, we will not charge a premium for the first month from the date you moved out. However, you will have to pay the premium due from 15 May until your tenancy ends on 1 June.

There are rules that decide whether a holiday let or an Airbnb must pay Council Tax or  Business Rates. The Valuation Office Agency are responsible for dealing with requests for properties changed over to Business Rates and removed from Council Tax. This is not something we can do.

Until the Valuation Office Agency notify us that they have moved your property into Business Rates, you will have to pay council tax. As the property will not be a main home fore anyone, you will also have to pay the premium.

If your property is unoccupied and you remove the furniture from it, we class it as an empty home rather than a second home. 

There is a 100% discount available for 3 months starting from the date you remove the furniture and then full council tax will be payable. The empty property will attract a 100% empty homes premium one year from the date you removed all the furniture, if it remains empty for that whole year.

We do not need to provide any notice before charging the premium. The rules say that the first time we make the decision to charge the premium we have to do so at least 12 months in advance.

We made the decision to charge the premium on 21 February 2024 and the premium comes into effect from 1 April 2025.