Performative policy is not a serious attempt to solve the housing emergency in the capital, writes David J Alexander.
Edinburgh City Council is today voting on a proposal to impose a 300 per cent surcharge on the owners of second homes in the city. This would mean that someone in a band A property will see their annual charge rise to £4,336, while band H owners will be asked for £15,935. The levy will be applied to second homes and long-term empty units. In Edinburgh, there are estimated to be more than 1,400 second homes and 1,700 empty ones.
Edinburgh City Council estimates the higher tax will raise about £4 million of additional annual revenue and may help to bring more empty homes back into use. The report going before councillors’ states: “Any application of additional council tax premiums across second and/or long-term empty homes would be anticipated to contribute positively to increasing the supply of affordable housing within the city and may additionally reduce upward pressure on house prices and rents.”
While this surcharge sounds as if it is attempting to address the current housing emergency in the capital it will do little or nothing to resolve the situation. It will do nothing to reduce house prices or rents, and nor will it ease the current shortages to alleviate the growing waiting lists for social housing.
There are 264,990 dwellings in Edinburgh, so the total number of second homes represents 0.5 per cent of the total housing stock across all tenures. There were 1,850 all sector newbuild starts in the financial year 2025-26 in Edinburgh, of which just 539 were for social housing.
Edinburgh’s social housing waiting list reached 31,589 by July 2026 with a third of those on it waiting more than five years to be housed. At 31 March 2025 there were 7,866 homeless households in Edinburgh comprising 14,219 individuals and 3,980 children and 2,820 young people (aged between 16-25).
So, while this policy appears to be addressing the housing emergency in Edinburgh it is instead a largely performative exercise to look as if the problem is being resolved. Empty houses are something of a red herring as the majority are vacant because someone is in long-term care or has died and their estate is taking some time to be concluded.
For some of the people who have a second home in Edinburgh it may be their original family home which they have inherited and wish to return to, having worked elsewhere in the UK. They may have family ties, or elderly relatives that they must see and that home is an essential component of retaining a connection to their families.
Too often with such policies there is an assumption that these homes are owned by the very wealthy in society when the truth is they can simply be a long-standing family home. Elsewhere in Scotland you often find rural family homes intermittently occupied that are kept as a link to the past.
This policy, while portrayed as a solution to the capital’s complex housing situation, is, in reality, a sticking plaster to cover a gaping wound. We need action, we need real policies, and we need commitments to increase the volume of housing being built, more encouragement for investment in the private rented sector, and a major push to generate thousands more social houses if the current housing emergency is to be addressed.
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