Give planners more powers to manage our housing provision

EVERYONE agrees that something needs to be done to ease the housing crisis in some of the Westcountry’s most desirable locations.

The yawning gap between average house prices and average wages in many parts of the South West has been brought into stark relief with posters plastered across a For Sale board on a piece of land with planning permission for a house near Fowey.

And with the Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen, joining the debate and warning that holiday homes are “hollowing out” many Cornish communities, the pressure for change is building.

But, like many long-running and seemingly intractable problems, while there is agreement about the need for change there is no clear plan on what that change should be. Property ownership is an important right for Britons and is seen as something that should be subjected to the minimum of interference.

If you have got the money and you pay the relevant taxes and stick to the planning rules it is right that you can buy or build a house where you like and use it any way you wish, within the law. That means the principle of allowing people to have mutliple homes cannot and should not be undermined except in exceptional circumstances.

But it doesn’t – or shouldn’t – prevent local authorities from setting quotas, imposing higher levels of council tax and using the funds to help underpin new developments to meet the needs of local people without the money to buy on the open market.

There is little point railing against the second home owners. Many are supporters of the communities in which they have invested in property and keen to back local businesses.

There is a risk, too, in driving a wedge between local people and visitors to the Westcountry. Our region, with its moors and beaches, harbour towns and villages, has been welcoming tourists since travel for pleasure was invented. Kill off that business and our problems around low wages and the difficulty of finding somewhere to live would be worsened, not improved.

Nor should the aim be to simply drive down house prices across the board. The wealth of hundreds of thousands of people in the Westcountry, most of them ‘locals’, is wrapped up in property. A serious fall in its value brings about negative equity for mortgage holders and ruins the economic outlook for all.

The challenge must be to retain the freedom to own property and maintain its value in line with the market while providing good quality homes for all. Planners need more levers to pull to ensure the right homes are built in the right place for the right market, whether that is as rental properties or places to buy at affordable prices.

Restrictive covenants, limiting some properties for full-time residents only, is one way to make that work and several communities, with local backing, have brought in just such rules. For too long, however, there has been an over-reliance on letting the market set the pace and it has led to the kind of resentment which sparked the poster protest in Fowey. Change radical enough to make a difference, is needed.