Article first published in the Cornish Guardian newspaper.
The Department for Levelling Up, Communities and Housing has launched a consultation into a proposal to make “planning permission a requirement” for new short-term holiday lets. There is another consultation on a registration scheme for such lets, which has been launched by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The leader of Cornwall Council has welcomed the announcements and she has urged people to respond to the consultations. Cornish MPs have done the same.
When I first heard the news I was delighted, as there has been a housing crisis in Cornwall for two decades, which is getting worse and worse with every passing year, and it is right that we do all we can to tackle the inequity at the heart of the housing market.
But I have since looked more closely at the consultation documentation and the associated statements from central government, and I have to say that I am extremely disappointed at the limited extent of what is being proposed.
The spin associated with the announcement claims that the Government wishes to “prioritise desperate local families looking for a home.” But I do not think that the proposed changes do that. It does not control second homes, while government ministers have been stating that the proposed shift in the planning system to limit holiday lets and airbnbs should only apply in “tourist hotspots.”
What is more, the consultation proposes that property-owners would have a “permitted development right” to change a dwelling into a short term let (ie. without planning permission). It adds that where “there is evidence of a local issue,” the “permitted development right” could be removed through an “Article 4 direction.” Unbelievably, it states that “this should apply to the smallest geographical area possible and could therefore be focussed on those areas or streets that see the highest numbers of short-term lets, or individual properties.”
This is frankly ridiculous. While the impact of holiday lets and airbnbs may, for example, be particularly disastrous in some coastal towns and villages, this is a problem for communities across the whole of Cornwall.
I hope that you will follow the advice of prominent Conservative politicians in Cornwall about feeding in your views to the consultations. And please join me in arguing that what has been proposed is inadequate. It is important that we demand that central government comes up with a more far-reaching approach to the control of short-term holiday lets and second homes.