Too Many Second Homes? Campaigning MP to meet ministe...

A campaigning MP is to meet with a government minister to discuss controls and disincentives for second homes.

Former Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron - who has also been leading a campaign to limit the number of holiday lets and Airbnbs in tourist areas - secured the meeting during a House of Commons debate.

Last month Farron led a debate in Parliament calling for measures against short lets

He presented a seven point plan to limit the number of second homes and make more affordable homes available for local families:

1. Make second homes and holiday lets new and separate categories of planning use. This would mean that councils and national parks would have the power to put a limit on the number of such properties in each town and village, protecting the majority of houses for permanent occupation;

2. Provide targeted, ring fenced finance so that planning departments have the resources to effectively police this new rule;

3. Give councils the power to increase council tax by up to 100 per cent on second homes in the worst affected communities - this would serve to protect those communities and it would also generate revenue that could then be ploughed back into their threatened schools and into new affordable housing for local families;

4. Force all holiday let owners to pay council tax, rather than avoiding paying anything at all if they are deemed a small business;

5. Give councils and national parks the power to ensure that 100 per cent of new builds are genuinely affordable;

6. Ban Section 21 evictions;

7. Ensure that platforms like Airbnb aren't allowed to cut corners and undermine the traditional holiday let industry, and have to meet the same standards as other rentals.

Earlier this month Farron told MPs: “Rural Britain’s housing crisis has become a catastrophe over the last two years of the pandemic.

“The Chancellor will know all about that, given the kind of constituency he represents. Some 80 per cent of all house sales in the Lakes and Dales in Cumbria have been to the second home market, and in some rural communities there has been a reduction in the private-rented affordable market of 70 per. cent.

“Local families are being forced out of our communities. The need for drastic and immediate action is obvious.

“Will the Minister [Lucy Frazer MP] agree – or will she agree to persuade her right honourable friend the Chancellor – to meet me, as the Chancellor’s constituency neighbour, to sit down and look at seven steps for saving our rural communities, so that we can prevent our towns and villages being emptied of their full-time populations?

“That will surely include giving councils the freedom to double council tax on second homes.”

Max Boyne
15 February 2022 07:56 AM

Of course they know this. Only the naive think that Governments and politicians are stupid. There may be times when they're misinformed, but they're certainly not stupid. They just don't care. Their agenda comes first, and that is always, power, status and money. In other words; votes.

There is almost no desire whatsoever within Government, or opposition for that matter, to 'change' anything for the benefit of society. Only to benefit them.