Housing in Tourist Destinations

Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for securing this important debate. It is brilliant to see him back on the Back Benches adding his voice on this important issue, as he always does behind the scenes. I welcome the Housing Minister to his place. I feel sorry for any Housing Minister because when they go into their post, they know that a swarm of Conservative MPs from Devon and Cornwall is about to descend on them to discuss this issue. I thank him for being there and taking this on.

I probably could have given the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay word for word. This issue is not new for us, but it has been growing over the past 20 years, and it became instantly acute after covid, for many reasons. We were in this room in May when my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) had a similar debate on short-term holiday lets and the planning system. I looked back at my speech from that day and I could probably repeat it again.

This issue became most acute to me after covid when I had a village constituency surgery in St Agnes on the north coast of my constituency. Within two hours, I had had 15 constituents and families through the doors, and every single one was either being evicted or their rent was going up so much that they could not stay. Pretty much all those properties were going to be flipped into Airbnbs. Since then, as a cohort of south-west Conservative MPs, we have been lobbying the Government to make changes in this area to ensure that we do not let this continue to happen.

I am so grateful that we have closed the business rates loophole, which has been referred to, and that the Government have consulted on a register for holiday lets and change of use for planning. Incidentally, we talked to the industry about potentially licensing holiday lets. That would not be practical or supported, so the register is absolutely what everybody wants to see happen. That makes it easy for Government to go down that road.

Earlier this year, I was invited to a parish meeting—not a parish council meeting— in Veryan on the south coast of my constituency, where a development had recently been put in place and another was proposed. The area was not particularly ideal for the village, but it was the only one on offer at the time. The room was absolutely packed with residents. They were not nimbys asking for this not to happen, but residents saying, “Will this development really be for local people? Will we really see local families being able to raise their children in this village?” Incidentally, almost 80% of the neighbouring village of Portloe is made up of second homes. There are 90 properties, and only one child lives in the whole village.

If we do not do something about this situation soon, our communities will be stripped back. Thankfully, in Veryan, they are twisting and turning and doing everything they can to ensure that those properties will be for local families, but it should not be that difficult for them. Parishes are having to put in all sorts of covenants and measures in perpetuity to ensure that a few years down the line, the homes will not get picked up and moved on to Airbnb.

We can do something about this. We are talking about bricks and mortar. In Cornwall, we have loads of bricks and mortar. We are building houses for the future. We have loads of empty properties above shops in our town centres. Let us look at all the properties we have; either something is going to be a home or it is not, and we can start to differentiate. We know how many homes we need, and we know what everyone else wants to use for an investment. We do not have to demonise investment, but we need to differentiate between the two, so that we always have enough family homes for the people who live there.