Cornwall considers licences for holiday lets

Cap on second homes may also ease housing crisis but local Tory says they bring in ‘vast amounts of money’

HOLIDAY home licences and a cap on the number of second homes could be introduced across Cornwall, as the county demands new powers from Westminster to tackle its housing crisis.

Outsiders buying property as second homes and holiday lets have caused a fractious row in the South West peninsula, where there is a lack of affordable housing. Cornwall in particular has an extreme shortage of emergency accommodation, and council officials have made stricter regulation of second homes and holiday lets a central plank of their plan to tackle the housing crisis.

However, the county council lacks the powers it needs to do this.

Now, it is demanding those powers as they negotiate a “county deal” with the Department for Levelling Up.

Oliver Monk, a Conservative councillor in Cornwall and the portfolio holder for housing and planning, said that licences for holiday lets and caps on second homes were the two missing pieces needed to resolve the issue.

“The next major step [is] giving the local authority the regulatory powers to license the amount of holiday accommodation that there is in the Duchy and the amount of housing that can be available for second homes,” he said.

Those powers, he said, would be applied on an area-by-area basis to protect those under pressure, rather than block second homes altogether.

Such a deal would devolve substantial powers to Cornwall with the likely caveat that it should introduce a directly elected mayor, under that title or another, to increase accountability.

Other measures have already been announced recently, including charging a 100 per cent council tax premium on second homes and closing the loophole that allowed homeowners to register for business rates instead of council tax without letting their homes out.

Mr Monk was adamant that second homes were not, in principle, a problem, saying they had brought “untold amounts of money” to the area.

“I live in the middle of Newquay and if I look out the window and look down the road, I can see about 15 vans, tilers, builders, loft conversions, and they’re all working in that market of providing services to second homes.”

Covid-19, however, and the surge in staycations, has exacerbated the problem. “The pandemic has acted as a catalyst to speed up the inequalities that have existed in the Cornish housing market for a long time,” said Mr Monk. Malcolm Bell, the chief executive of Visit Cornwall, said that he expected things to cool down this year, with demand decreasing and many landlords finding their short-term let businesses to be no longer profitable.

Mr Bell said, though, that much of the county’s housing shortage was driven by national issues such as low interest rates and a lack of housebuilding.

It comes as Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, this week admitted that the Government would not hit its manifesto target of building 300,000 new homes this year.

He said that housing plans should be driven by beauty, belonging and democracy as he announced plans to allow residents to organise street-level referenda on planning applications.

It was portrayed as a substantial shift away from the Government’s earlier promises of radical housing reform.

Like much of the rest of the UK, Cornwall needs to build more homes but faces fierce opposition to development. The council is building modular “micro houses” to alleviate some of the pressure.

A Department for Levelling Up spokesman said: “We are keen to work together with local leaders in the region to regenerate its towns and villages, boost people’s earnings and tackle local issues.”