New approach to tackle impact of second homes

THE Welsh Government has set out plans to address the impact of second home ownership on communities in Wales.

Julie James, minister for climate change, announced the “threepronged approach” to the Senedd on Tuesday.

This will include addressing the issue of affordable and available housing in Wales.

National and local taxation systems will be used to ensure second home owners make a “fair” contribution to communities, the Welsh Government says.

A statutory registration scheme for holiday accommodation is also part of the approach, as well as examining planning laws.

Such measures will feature in a pilot in Wales, expected to begin later this year, in an area set to be decided in the summer.

They will then be evaluated before being considered for rollout across Wales.

Work on a registration scheme for all holiday accommodation and a consultation on changes to local taxes will also begin over the summer.

Ms James said: “The continuing rise of house prices mean people, especially younger generations, can no longer afford to live in the communities they have grown up in.

“A high concentration of second homes or holiday lets can have a very detrimental impact on small communities, and in some areas could compromise the Welsh language being spoken at a community level.

“We have already taken strides on some of these issues – last year we became the only nation in the UK to give local authorities the power to introduce a 100% council tax levy on second homes.

“But the urgency and gravity of this situation calls for further intervention, which means real and ambitious actions are delivered at pace, to inject fairness back into the housing system.”

Ms James visited St Davids in Pembrokeshire yesterday to hear how money raised from the council tax levy had been used to build 18 affordable homes for local people.

She said this demonstrated how community action and government policy could “bring fairness back into our housing market”.

The Welsh Government’s plans take recommendations from a report by Dr Simon Brooks, associate professor in the school of management at Swansea University, which was published earlier this year.

At the beginning of 2020, it was estimated that there were 24,423 second homes in Wales that could be taxed on that basis. Government figures from that year suggest second homes and holiday lets were more than 10% of the housing stock in Gwynedd, 9.15% of the stock in Pembrokeshire and 8.26% of it in Anglesey