Second Homes and Holiday Lets: Rural Communities

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Happy new year to all. Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. This can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of second homes and holiday lets in rural communities.

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. Happy new year to you, too, and to colleagues.

It is a huge privilege to serve our communities in Cumbria—our towns, villages lakes and dales, among the rugged beauty of England’s finest landscapes—yet the people who live in our communities are even more precious than the places themselves. We welcome those who see Cumbria as a holiday destination: a place for leisure and relaxation, and a place of peaceful serenity and exhilarating extremes. It is our collective privilege to be the stewards of such a spectacular environment for the country, yet our full-time local communities face an existential threat unlike any other in the UK. I am immensely grateful to have secured this debate, because the housing crisis that has faced our communities in Cumbria and elsewhere in rural Britain for decades has rapidly become a catastrophe during the two years of the pandemic.

For the last few decades, we have seen an erosion in the number of properties in Cumbria that are available and affordable for local people to buy or rent. What little I know of geology tells me that although erosion usually takes place over huge passages of time, sometimes a whole rockface may collapse or a whole piece of a cliff might drop into the sea in a single instant. That is what has happened to our housing stock during the pandemic. In the space of less than two years, a bad situation has become utterly disastrous.

I have been calling for the Government to take action from the very beginning, so I confess to being frustrated and angry that Ministers have yet to do anything meaningful to tackle the problem. As a result, many of us living in rural communities feel ignored, abandoned and taken for granted by the Government, and we stand together today as rural communities to declare that we will not be taken for granted one moment longer.

In South Lakeland, the average house price is 11 times greater than the average household income. Families on low or middle incomes, and even those on reasonably good incomes, are completely excluded from the possibility of buying a home. Although the local council in South Lakeland has enabled the building of more than 1,000 new social rented properties, there are still more than 3,000 families languishing on the housing waiting list. Even before the pandemic, at least one in seven houses in my constituency was a second home—a bolthole or an investment for people whose main home is somewhere else.

In many towns and villages, such as Coniston, Hawkshead, Dent, Chapel Stile and Grasmere, the majority of properties are now empty for most of the year. Across the Yorkshire Dales, much of which is in Cumbria and in my constituency, more than a quarter of the housing stock in the national park is not lived in. In Elterwater in Langdale, 85% of the properties are second homes. Without a large enough permanent population, villages just die. The school loses numbers and then closes. The bus service loses passengers, so it gets cut. The pub loses its trade, the post office loses customers and the church loses its congregation, so they close too. Those who are left behind are isolated and often impoverished in communities whose life has effectively come to an end.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having secured this important debate. He has mentioned that his local authority has brought forward some affordable housing—I cannot remember the number he said—but that it was all rented. The Government have created a new scheme, the first homes scheme, to allow discounted properties to be purchased as affordable homes. Is the hon. Gentleman pursuing that with his local authority, to try to make more of those properties available to his local first-time buyers?

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that the first homes scheme cannot be instead of other schemes but has to be in addition to them. By the way, in a community like ours where the average household price is 11 times greater than the average income, the first homes scheme will not help people; it will not even nearly help them. Maybe if their income was seven times less than the average house price, it might just help them, so it is a good scheme, but it is barely even the tip of the iceberg. Yes, I have spoken to the previous Secretary of State to ask him to make our area a pilot, but that does not touch the sides, if I am honest. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman has raised a really important point.

During the pandemic, I have spoken to many local estate agents across our county. Around 80% of all house sales during the past two years have been in the second home market. Those who have the money to do so are rethinking their priorities, investing in the rising value of property and seeking a piece of the countryside to call their own, and we can kind of understand that. I do not wish to demonise anybody with a second home, or to say that there are no circumstances in which it is okay to have one, but let me be blunt: surely, someone’s right to have a second home must not trump a struggling family’s right to have any home, yet in reality, apparently it does. Every day that the Government fail to act is another day that they are backing those who are lucky enough to have multiple homes against those who cannot find any home in the lakes, the dales or any other rural community in our country.

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

My own constituency, Aberconwy in north Wales, has this problem—not to the extent that the hon. Member describes, but certainly smaller villages are particularly vulnerable to high levels of second home ownership. However, I wonder what he has to say about the example given to me of a farmer whose family had lived in one valley, Penmachno, for many years. He himself had to move away to find other work, so he now has a second home—his family home—in Penmachno, but he must live in England. In that circumstance, there is a second home in the village that is not occupied, but there is a tradition and a family heritage in that village. Should that person then have to give up that home, or does the hon. Member have a way of recognising that kind of arrangement?

[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his intervention, which is really helpful and worthwhile. I would say two things. First, we have a desperate lack of affordable private rented accommodation, so we want both social rented houses and houses in the private rented stock. It seems to me that that is clearly the route for the hon. Gentleman’s constituent to go down.

Secondly, possibly the only thing in the coalition agreement that had anything to do with me whatsoever was a commitment to what we called “home on the farm”: the ability, which is still the Government’s stated policy, for farmers to convert underused or semi-used farm buildings into affordable homes for families, but also as part of the wider housing network. These are all small ounces that will help us to shift the problem, and I wish that the hon. Gentleman’s Government in Wales and his Government here would take up these suggestions.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having secured this important debate. It is clear from some of the questions that have been asked, and from what the hon. Gentleman is saying, that this is a complex issue. I will give an example: on the Isle of Wight, the village of Seaview has 82% second home ownership, so it has been effectively stripped out of permanent life, and Bembridge and Yarmouth have similar problems. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a group of us have written to the Secretary of State with over two dozen ideas for how to make the upcoming housing and planning Bill—if it does come—much better and stronger, and give it a much wider base of support? We have put forward recommendations, and some options on second home ownership.

[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his helpful contribution, and for his ongoing concern and interest in this issue, which is very laudable indeed. In one sense, this issue is not complex at all. If a person is forced out of their community, it is not slightly complex; it is just bloomin’ tragic. Yes, there is a planning Bill, and I look forward to that. I might feel all sorts of dread about that Bill, but it is an opportunity to do something. However, every single day is an opportunity to do something. The opportunity was two years ago, a year ago, last week and the week before, and the Government do nothing.

The simple reality is that it is not that complex to do things that will shift the dial and save the dales and other rural communities that are being undermined in the way they are. That is what so frustrating to us: there are people from all parties in this Chamber today, and there are other people who would be here on a normal Thursday if it were not this time of year and if there were any votes today. The reality is that we know there is a problem, and we see no action from the Government. Every day that goes by is another day wasted. It is not complex—it is just tragic.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for calling the debate and I congratulate him on his speech. Urban areas that are holiday destinations—such as York, which has more than 8 million visitors a year—are also plagued by the issue, which is about not only Airbnbs and holiday lets but second homes, not least because people have now discovered new ways of working. Is that not another factor to add to the equation when we look at not only who has the ownership, but what is being developed?

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Lady makes a great point and I am grateful for her intervention. It is not just a rural issue, although it may predominantly be rural. York is clearly a good example of somewhere that suffers in a different way. I will come to the issue of holiday lets and some of the answers in a moment. It will rob communities of their very life if we do not intervene. I am not someone who is anti-market—I am anti-broken market, and this is a broken market. This is our opportunity to do something about it.

Excessive second home ownership is a colossal problem in our communities. The purpose of this debate is to shake the Government out of their demonstrable and inexcusable inaction and to take the action required to save our communities.

The crisis has become a catastrophe, and it is not just about second homes. Holiday lets are an important part of our tourism economy. In the Lake district, we argue and believe that we are the most visited part of Britain outside London. Our tourism economy is worth more than £3 billion a year and employs 60,000 people—comfortably Cumbria’s biggest employer. It is a vibrant industry and, by its very nature, a joyful one; I am proud to be a voice for Cumbria tourism in this place. Those 60,000 people working in hospitality and tourism need to live somewhere. Some 80% of the entire working-age population of the Lake district already works in hospitality and tourism. We need to increase the number of working-age people who can afford to live and raise a family in our communities, yet the absolute opposite is happening at a rate of knots.

During the pandemic, in South Lakeland alone—just one district that makes up part of the Lake district—there was a 32% rise in one year in the number of holiday lets. I assure the Minister that those were not new builds; they were not magicked out of thin air. Those new holiday lets emerged in 2021 following the lifting of the covid eviction ban. That is not to blame the ban; it was a good idea, and it had to come to an end at some point. My point is that that rise was over a tiny period of time: less than 12 months, in reality. The fact is that this time last year those new holiday lets were someone’s home.

In Sedbergh, Kirkby Lonsdale, Kendal, Windermere, Staveley, Ambleside, Coniston, Grasmere, Grange and throughout Cumbria, I have met people who have been evicted from their homes under a section 21 eviction order—which, incidentally, this Government promised to ban in their last manifesto.

Among the hundreds evicted, I think of the couple with two small children in Ambleside, who struggled to pay £800 a month for their flat above a shop in town; they were evicted last spring only to find the home they had lived in for years on Airbnb for £1,200 a week. I think of the mum near Grange, whose teenage son had lived in their rented home his whole life; they were evicted only to see their property on Airbnb a few days later for over £1,000 a week. I think of the tradesman from Sedbergh, who had served the community for 15 years; a few days after he was evicted, his former home was also on Airbnb for £1,000 a week. There are hundreds more individuals and families in the same situation right across rural Cumbria.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Back in 2018, I did some work with Gordon Marsden, the then MP for Blackpool South, looking at Airbnb and the issues of the sharing economy for the all-party parliamentary group for hospitality and tourism. We came up with a recommendation for a statutory registrations scheme for all accommodation providers. Is that something the hon. Gentleman has considered?

[Tim Farron]

I have, and I will come to some suggestions in a moment, including on how we might tackle the issue—to put it neutrally—of Airbnb. The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and the need for such a scheme is huge. Undoubtedly, the ease with which people can turn a home into a holiday let is part of the problem. The consequences are phenomenal. The people I am speaking about are real human beings; I could pick dozens and dozens more to talk about. What it means for them is that they have to leave the area. This is no less than a Lakeland clearance: whole communities ejected from the places where they were raised, where they had chosen to raise their families, or where they had set down roots to live, work and contribute to our economy.

Will the Minister accept that this is both morally abhorrent and economically stupid? We have businesses in Cumbria that, having survived covid so far, are now reducing their opening hours or closing all together because they cannot find staff anymore. We have people isolated and vulnerable because they cannot find care staff. There are friends of mine in that situation, in part because the local workforce has been effectively cleared out and expelled. In each case I mentioned earlier—in Sedbergh, Ambleside and Grange—the people could not find anywhere else to live in those communities or in the wider community. They have had to uproot and move away all together. How is the economy of Britain’s second biggest tourism destination expected to deliver for Britain’s wider economy without anybody to staff it?

What about the children who have to move away, and are forced to move school, and leave behind friends and support networks? What about those left behind in our dwindling communities, whose schools are now threatened with closure? I have spoken to MPs, not just those who are here and for whose presence I am massively grateful, but from rural communities right across this House. Most of those, particularly in England and Wales, are from the Conservative party. There is a kind of private agreement that this is a catastrophe. They see it in their own constituencies: the collapse of affordable, available housing for local communities is killing towns and villages in Cornwall, Northumberland, Shropshire, Devon, Somerset, North Yorkshire, the highlands of Scotland and rural Wales, as well as in my home of Cumbria.

Our rural communities want two things from the Minister today: first, a sign that he understands that this catastrophe is happening; and secondly, a commitment not to wait for the planning Bill, but to act radically and to act right now.

[Robin Millar]

Forgive me for not thanking the hon. Member earlier for securing this debate; this is a crucial debate and very important to residents in Aberconwy. I want to ask him about the point he made about the distribution of this problem in Wales, Scotland and England. Is he suggesting that this is a problem that can be solved by the UK Government, or is it one that he feels must be dealt with by the devolved Administrations?

[Tim Farron]

I do not care who solves it—it needs solving. The UK Government have got powers that they could use.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Order. No disrespect, and I do not want to stop the debate or the interventions. However, those who are speaking later may want to be a little hesitant to intervene.

[Tim Farron]

I will be guided by you, Mr Sharma. Unless people are desperate, I will not take any more interventions. Members have the opportunity to speak after I finish.

The point that the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) makes is important; the UK Government have powers and I will come on to talk about the things that they could do. There are things that the Welsh Government could do, and there are some things that they are already doing that the UK Government are not doing—we could learn some lessons from them. There are also some powers that local authorities and national parks have, but those are very limited. It is essentially about taxation and planning law, in particular; those things come from both the devolved and central Administrations. However, it is a perfectly sensible and intelligent point that the hon. Member makes.

Now might be the moment, having asked the Minister to acknowledge that the catastrophe is real and to act, for me to give him some ideas about how he might act. What could and should the Government do? I propose seven steps to save rural communities. First, they could 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. Secondly, they could provide targeted, ringfenced finance so that planning departments have the resources to police this new rule effectively.

Thirdly, the Government could follow the lead of the Welsh Government and give councils the power to increase council tax by up to 100% on second homes in the worst-affected communities. That would serve to protect those communities and generate significant revenue that could then be ploughed back into their threatened schools and into new affordable housing for local families. A quick assessment shows that, in Coniston alone, that would raise £750,000 a year, which would make a colossal difference to that community.

Fourthly, the Government could force all holiday let owners to pay council tax, as they can avoid paying anything at all if they are deemed a small business.

Fifthly, the Government could give councils and national parks the power to ensure that, at least in some cases, 100% of new builds are genuinely affordable, and provide funding to pump prime those developments, possibly in part via the proceeds of a second homes council tax supplement. We have a deeply broken housing market. Of course, developers can sell any property that they build in our rural communities for a handsome price, but that is surely not the most important thing. Is it not time to stop building simply to meet demand, and instead build to meet need?

Sixthly, the Government could simply keep their manifesto promise and ban section 21 evictions.

Seventhly, the Government can ensure that platforms such as Airbnb are not allowed to cut corners and undermine the traditional holiday let industry. Their properties should have to meet the same standards as any other rental. Failure to do that is unsafe, unfair and creates a fast track for the Lakeland clearances to continue and escalate.

I want to be constructive, and I hope that I have been. I called for this debate not to throw bricks at the Government, but because I love my communities and I am despairing at what is happening to them. I am determined that Ministers should understand the depth and scale of this catastrophe, and that they should take radical action right now. I support free markets, but unregulated markets that are obviously broken are not free at all. That is when they need the visible hand of Government to referee and intervene.

The Government will have noticed that, in recent months, rural Britain has demonstrated at the ballot box that it will not tolerate being taken for granted. This debate gives Ministers an early opportunity to demonstrate, in return, that they will stop taking us for granted, standing idly by while rural communities are rapidly destroyed.

To those of us who live in Cumbria and other beautiful parts of our country, it is obvious what is happening, and it is heartbreaking. Likewise, it is obvious to us what needs to be done, and it frustrates us, to the point of fury, that the Government have so far failed to even acknowledge the problem, much less to do anything about it. Today is their chance to put that right. Rural Britain is watching.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

Mr Sharma, I am very grateful to you for giving me a moment or two at the end. Thank you for giving us all the opportunity to make our points today. I pay tribute to the following for their contributions: the hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), and the Minister himself. I hope I have not missed anybody out. There were also some useful interventions, mostly from Members who are no longer in their place, although the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) is still present.

Lots of things were said. We were reminded that this issue affects not just rural areas, but coastal areas and cities. It has an impact on the hospitality and tourism economy and the workforce. I speak to lots of people in hospitality and tourism, and they are very keen that action is taken. This is not about tourism versus action; this is about the determination of the tourism industry that action should be taken. Of course, other industries and forms of employment—for example, in health and education—are also hugely affected by the lack of a local permanent population.

I welcome the review that the Minister talked about. That is all good—but it is all we got. I was not overwhelmed by a tidal wave of urgency—in fact, quite the opposite. In the seconds that I have left, I want to say to the Minister that inaction is action. It is action on behalf of those who own multiple homes against our communities. I want to see an awful lot more than we have seen today. By the time a part of what we proposed is looked at in a review, which will take years because they always do, there will be another 32% and then another 32%, and the communities at risk of dying that I talked about earlier will be actually dead. We need urgency right now, so I ask for further meetings immediately. The Minister talks about the planning rules, but how about letting national parks pilot the differential in planning use categories? That, at least, would be a start, to demonstrate that it could be possible. I am disappointed by the lack of urgency, but I am grateful for the opportunity.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of second homes and holiday lets in rural communities.