May 3rd, 2022.
It’s a few days until the family returns to NZ, disappointed with the signs of poverty in the UK. A contributor to poverty has been the growth of the second home market. This has caused problems in holiday regions (13,500+ in Cornwall). Whilst recognising the benefits that tourism brings to the region, if the people that service that industry can’t afford to rent or buy a property then the tourist experience will diminish, and the industry will suffer. The problem is that the property market is now out of balance in the region.
In the media, a local suggested a novel approach to the situation. They proposed that second home purchasers would need to buy a licence from the local council with a suggestion of £30,000+ being the price. 10 such licences would then fund the building of 2 social housing units. With the turnover of second homes being about 1,200 per year, this would produce £36,000,000 in revenue (or dampen demand). This would fund 120 housing units. There has been discussion about this as to whether the licences would be one-offs, or in perpetuity, in which case the council would control a secondary market in licences and take a cut on each trade.
In 2019 nearly 10,000 houses were sold in Cornwall, with the average price in tourist areas being £425,000. This raised the thought that perhaps the licence should be price related not a fixed fee. The fixed fee, if high enough would, in theory, deter sales of lower priced homes into the second home market. It is an interesting concept, and it is causing a lot of discussion in the region.
Meanwhile, back on the tourist trail whilst the family are still here, we visited their ancestral homelands of mid-Wales. A trip to the Myndd Epynt proved fruitful. The village and farms were cleared from here to form the Sennybridge Training Area.
The military built a replica village for training in in-house clearance and urban combat. Interestingly, the architecture is Balkan/Central European in style.
The families were cleared in the 1940s to give the military 30,000 acres for artillery and general training. It is within easy access from Credenhill, the SAS HQ and apart from the village has confidence-building courses. (That’s climbing high things and crawling through muddy drainpipes!).
Farmers are still allowed to run sheep across the hills, but not when the red flag flies. They do have to bear the risk of the occasional stock loss!
Coming back into England it was apparent that there is going to be a good crop of mistletoe later in the year.
Finally, for a little nostalgia, there was a steam train excursion that came through our local station going from Cardiff to Penzance and back.
