Hmm - perhaps a 50% surcharge for a few years will help redress the past few years' imbalance?
And, of course, it would certainly help to...
Stop The Marina!
The government is examining proposals for a change in council tax law for Britain's 328,000 second home owners. A change in the categorisation of council tax charges could see second homes being taxed at a higher rate than first homes. The idea, designed to curb rising house prices and a shortage in affordable housing in rural areas, is being considered by the Affordable Rural Housing Commission, which will report next month.
It is understood that the proposals - which were drawn up by the Commission for Rural Communities and would require the creation of a national register of second homes - are also being looked at by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The department has commissioned a review of local government finance structures which will report later in the year. Under existing legislation local authorities can charge up to 90% of standard council tax bills to owners who declare their property to be a second home. Two years ago the government ended a 50% tax relief for those who leave their second houses vacant for most of the year.
Trevor Cherrett, head of planning at the Commission for Rural Communities, who drafted the submission, said: "We want to ensure that local authorities spend the money on council charges from second homes to help mitigate the impact of second homes on rural communities. Ideally, that would mean building more affordable housing."
David Fursdon, president of the Country Land and Business Association and a member of the Affordable Rural Housing Commission, said a council tax increase could be targeted at areas where second home buyers have a negative impact on the local economy, but he added that this was not an "end-all solution" to a lack of affordable housing in rural Britain.
According to the Centre for Future Studies, the total value of second homes in Britain is around £38.7bn. Some 8% of Britons own one. The CFS predicts that there could be as many as 405,000 second home owners by 2015, an increase of 24% in 10 years. Without a dramatic rise in the rate of building new homes, Britain is likely to suffer a shortfall of more than a million homes by 2022.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "Second homes are a serious problem in some localised rural areas, but people retiring to and commuting from the countryside also cause prices to increase."
I hope anyone who is glad about this does not have a granny annexe with it's own entrance and kitchen facilities as once there is no Granny in residence it becomes a second home, even if it is part of the building of your main house.
If it is no longer needed for Granny, you can either let it out as a flat, there are those who would be grateful of a small therefore possibly reasonably priced home to rent. It could even become a grandchild's first flat. Alternatively change the entrance and re-incorporate it into the family home again. Why would anyone want to keep a self contained empty annexe?
Second home owners in Cornish seaside village Rock and other holiday hot-spots should be hit by a special tax, it has been suggested.
A government-backed commission is suggesting that second home owners be charged extra tax, to help pay for more affordable housing in the countryside.
And commission chairman Elinor Goodman singled out Rock as an area that could be considered for the tax.
Second homes are blamed for pushing house prices beyond locals' reach.
North Cornwall is the least affordable rural local authority in England, with the average property costing £212,960 or 10 times the local average earnings.
The proposal for an "impact tax" from the 12-member independent Affordable Rural Housing Commission follows a six-month inquiry into the housing crisis in the countryside.
The Commission also says 11,000 new affordable homes need to be built each year in market towns and villages to meet demand.
Ms Goodman said an impact tax could help in some of the most popular rural holiday destinations.
She said second homes across the country were not a problem, but became an issue in certain parts of Cornwall and the Lake District.
The commission is suggesting an impact tax which would be levied on second home owners, but only within quite small areas.
"So you wouldn't be talking about the whole of Cornwall, but you might be talking about a particular village like Rock or somewhere like that," said Ms Goodman.
"We've been told that having houses empty for long periods undermines the sustainability of those communities and people are not living there full time and not sending their children to the local schools and not using the local medical practice.
"So it makes it more likely those services will disappear.
"There should be some way of raising money which can be ploughed back into the community, either in the shape of more affordable housing or possibly to help local services."
Teresa Butchers, a member of the Commission and chief executive of the Devon and Cornwall Housing Group, said: "There are some areas in my part of the world, the coastal villages, where second home owners now outnumber the locals, and there you are beginning to get dead villages.
"So the beauty and vibrancy that the second home owners have bought into, they are destroying.
"It's a very big problem but for a very small number of villages."
The following is abridged from the post above, note the bold...
Well pardon me, but if 12 people have done six months work on this bloomin' enquirey, and all they can come up with is "we've been told that", "some areas", and "more likely" then they should be made to give their wages back, and the whole report be ripped up and started again.
If after six months they cannot come up with conclusive eveidence, then they have prooved nothing.
There's a lot of that going on also with objective one money - I would say like bees around a honey pot, but then bees are generally useful (apart from the occasional sting) but many people and their ideas for using up O1 money are not.
Perhaps Andrew George could get a figure for the number of MPs that own second homes/holiday homes in Cornwall. How many members of each of the main British nationalist parties (New Labour/the Conservative Party/the Lib Dems) own such homes and better still how many members of the cabinet spend the occasional few days away from their London government base in their little Cornish hidy hole? Of course the latter have got a good excuse for not revealing all (and we're not talking about naturist tendencies here). They only need to draw up the spectre of Bin Laden sending his suicide cadres to storm the beaches on specially adapted surf boards to keep the lid firmly fastened down on that information.
Oh, so it's only 20% second home ownership on the Isles of Scilly, and under 10% elsewhere. So it's not 20% all through Cornwall, as the myth promoted here would have us believe.
Well all I know is that there is a street in downlong St Ives where just 7% of the twenty-eight houses are lived in all year round. I think you will find that in many many communities it's well over 10% (and no doubt well over 20%). It depends what category they are using to enable them to collate the data.
That's a rather specific figure Porthia, 7 %, how did you come by it?
Now that I do not disagree with. In Sennen cove, and this is purely speculation on my part, I'd say you could say that 10% of the houses are not occupied year round.
BUT,
You could also probably say that 8% of the houses are second homes.
OR
You could say that 5% of the houses are locally owned second homes and let out as holiday cottages.
OR
You could say that 2% of the houses are not locally owned second homes and let out as holiday cottages.
I will come back and provide you with reliable evidence strops. However if I find out it's more than 7% I will let you know, but I am pretty sure that that at least 80% of those houses are second homes or holiday lets.
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