BURNLEY Council has rejected a government scheme aimed at reducing the number of empty houses.

The owners of vacant properties currently get a 50 per cent discount on their council tax, but from April 1 next year the Government is giving council's the option to reduce or remove the discount completely for empty property.

It is thought this will have the knock-on effect of reducing the number of houses left empty for long periods of time.

However, at a meeting of Burnley Council's executive committee this week, local taxation manager Mick Frazer told members that while the number of empty homes in Burnley was a big problem, this measure was not the way to solve it.

He said: "This is a major problem for the council and for the streets of Burnley. The Elevate programme will soon be introduced to address some of these problems. But if we decide to increase the council tax charge for these properties it will have a number of implications.

"It will have an impact on the council's collection performance, which is measured against national targets. We currently have difficulty collecting from many owners of such properties."

Mr Frazer said reducing or removing the discount could also force landlords with a large stock of empty houses to increase the rents on the properties in which they have tenants so they can meet the extra costs.

He added: "Given that a lot of the tenants will be in receipt of benefit, then all we will be doing is increasing the benefit bill. It doesn't seem to make much sense to raise this charge."

Trinity ward councillor Carole Galbraith, who is the executive member for regeneration and housing, said she was disappointed that this would not help resolve the problem of empty houses.

She said: "I am sorry that the Government was expecting that this could be another way to try and stop properties being left empty. It is quite shocking that this is not going to solve the problems in areas blighted by empty houses."

Coun Denis Otter said: "Increasing the council tax on empty properties would increase incentive to bring it back into use if there was demand for the properties in the area.

"But we don't have effective demand for the properties so it is not going to work in East Lancashire."

The executive committee voted against reducing or removing the council tax discount for the owners of empty properties.

Members also voted against reducing the council tax discount for second homes and introducing locally defined discounts.