Article by Cllr Dick Cole first published in Cornish Guardian newspaper (21st June 2023)

Councillors on Gwynedd Council in North West Wales have voted to take advantage of new rules brought in by the Welsh Parliament, which allow them to control the number of second homes and holiday lets through the planning system.

Put simply, people would need planning permission to turn a residential property into some form of holiday accommodation. This will now proceed to a public consultation and it is anticipated that the final decision will be made in 2024. It follows the decision of this Council to increase local taxation on “second homes,” which means that owners now pay a 250% council tax rate.

This is something I have been campaigning on for decades and I am pleased to see Mebyon Kernow’s sister party – Plaid Cymru – taking a leading role in this matter. One of their Cabinet members on Gwynedd Council was particularly out-spoken and I fully agreed with what he had to say. He described the ownership of “second homes” as “immoral” when so many people do not have a single or first home.

I have little sympathy for representatives of the second home owners, some of whom seem to think that their leisure activities and holiday bolt-holes should take priority over local residents trying to make ends meet in their home areas. I also found myself unimpressed with one spokesman for the holiday sector who unbelievably said that without tourism there “will be nothing left here for people … there’s nothing much here besides the view, the beaches and the mountains.” His assertion is nonsense, and deliberately conflating the whole tourism sector with the impact of second homes is disingenuous in the extreme.

But I was especially shocked to see a prominent Conservative shadow minister in Wales being extremely critical of the initiative. She suggested that such a policy shift could be construed as anti-outsider, adding that it was all a “barmy idea” and possibly “challengeable in law.” What rubbish. Politicians should be working to protect the social fabric of local communities and that should mean better controls over the second homes and its related negative impact on local housing markets.

As a Cornwall Councillor, I can report that there does seem to be a broad consensus among political parties (represented on the unitary authority in Cornwall) that there should be planning controls on second homes. This includes the ruling Conservative administration. But because Cornwall has been denied meaningful devolution, politicians to the west of the Tamar do not have the powers to do what is being proposed in Gwynedd.