North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has called on the Welsh Government to increase the supply of social and affordable housing in Gwynedd and to stop blaming the affordable housing shortage in holiday home hotspots on second home ownership.
Responding to the Statement by the Minister for Climate Change on ‘Affordability, Second Homes and the Welsh Language’ in yesterday’s meeting of the Welsh Parliament, Mr Isherwood stressed that many of the holiday homes in the county were built for that purpose years ago and called on Ministers to address the housing shortage there by increasing the supply of social and affordable housing.
He said:
“Last summer, it was reported that almost 40 per cent of properties sold in Gwynedd in the year to April 2020 were purchased as second homes, but strong anecdotal evidence indicates that this resulted from a disproportionately large number of existing second homes on the market.
“When I previously asked the Welsh Government what analysis it had therefore undertaken to establish whether this was a representative sample, they replied 'none'. The need for local people to be able to access quality affordable housing in holiday home hotspots is not a new issue; the same issue applied when my family sold our holiday home in Abersoch half a century ago, and holiday homes still in use as holiday homes today were built there in increasing volumes from the late nineteenth century.
“With many owners not only connected to local people economically, but also through personal friendship and even marriage - and I speak from personal experience here - taxing holiday hotspot second-home owners simply displaces ownership to wealthier second home owners or onerous registration with the Valuation Office Agency as legitimate holiday lets.
“Following the Welsh Government's massive cuts in Social Housing Grant, the Assembly's North Wales Regional Committee met in Pwllheli in October 2003 - 18 years ago - to take evidence from local people on the affordable housing crisis in communities there - when deliverable solutions were proposed to us.
“So, instead of conflating this issue with second homes built for that purpose, as most were, what direct action will you therefore now take to identify the specific local need in these hotspots for both homes for social rent and, separately, affordable homes for intermediate rent or low cost home ownership, and then to target increased supply of both in these hotspots to meet this need?”
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Isherwood added:
“In her response, once again, this Minister blamed post-2010 UK Conservative Government for Labour Welsh Government actions during the previous decade, when a UK Labour Government was in power. As the 2012 UK Housing Review stated ‘it was the Welsh Government itself that gave housing lower priority in its overall budgets, so that by 2009/10 it had by far the lowest proportional level of housing expenditure of any of the four UK countries’."