Data for council tax base purposes are not taken on the same date every year and can vary slightly from year to year. It now has to be taken on the first Monday in October and this is consistent each year (the date to which figures relate to). Up until April 2013 dwellings undergoing major structural repairs for up to 12 months and those vacant for less than 6 months were eligible for a council tax exemption (Class A and C respectively). In April 2013 these exemptions were replaced with a new flexible discount which applied to all empty properties. Local authorities are now entitled to apply any level of discount from 0% to 100% to all empty properties. Where local authorities award zero discounts for empty properties there is less incentive for owners to report their property as empty. This could have led to some under reporting of some empty properties.

Socially rented figures include occupied and vacant dwellings as the tenure of socially rented stock is not dependant on the dwelling being occupied.Please note that the following revisions have been made to the National Records of Scotland dwelling count, occupied and vacant dwellings figures for 30 June, from which these figures have been derived.Figures are rounded to the neartest thousand.

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The information covers the number of vacancies within housing stock held by Local Authorities and Registered Social Landlords. The information is collected via new annual returns from Welsh social landlords in order to monitor trends over time in the proportion of housing stock which is vacant. Vacant dwellings includes:1. Dwellings undergoing or awaiting major capital works repair, conversion or improvement;2. Vacant dwellings that have formal approval for sale or demolition only if they are still part of HRA (Housing Revenue Account) dwellings;3. All vacant dwellings to be sold whether awaiting sale or undergoing repair prior to being sold; 4. Vacant dwellings subject to demolition or closing orders or acquired for demolition under Part VI or IX of the Housing Act 1985. The information excludes vacant dwellings where an offer of tenancy has been accepted even if no rent is being paid at the end of the financial year.