I beg to move,
That this House has considered housing provision in tourist destinations.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. Returning to the Back Benches after two and a half years, I am very grateful that the very first time I apply for a Westminster Hall debate, I get one. I do not know what I have done to deserve it, but I am grateful for the opportunity. I could have chosen to speak about a number of issues affecting my constituents on my first occasion back in Westminster Hall, but housing has to be at the very top of that list.
Housing has long been an issue of concern in Cornwall, but it has without doubt become a crisis in recent years. It is the biggest challenge facing us today, especially in our coastal towns and villages. I am aware that Cornwall is not the only area to face this challenge, and many tourist areas across the UK face similar situations. I am pleased to see so many hon. colleagues present for the debate.
Without question, Cornwall is by far the best part of the United Kingdom. That is why so many visitors descend on us every year, to sample the delights of our duchy. I have always counted myself incredibly fortunate, not only to have been born there but to have lived there my whole life and to get to live for 52 weeks of the year somewhere that many people pay several thousand pounds to spend a couple of weeks each year. Visitors of course provide many economic benefits to Cornwall, but also bring many unintended consequences, with essential parts of our infrastructure being overstretched. The biggest impact that we see from tourism, however, is on our housing.
Let me make it clear at the beginning that this speech is not anti-tourist or anti-tourism. Tourism is vital to the Cornish economy. It is estimated that one in three households in Cornwall gain at least part of their income from tourism, and many thousands of businesses throughout the supply chain rely on visitors. But there has to be a balance, and there is little doubt that in recent years that balance has tipped too far. In providing accommodation for tourism, the impact of the number of second homes and holiday lets is proving damaging to many local communities.
We have seen many instances of local businesses and public services—ranging from hotels to our schools and hospitals—being unable to recruit key staff, with the lack of available housing given as the main reason why they cannot recruit or why people cannot move to start work. The impact is also felt in the cost of housing for local people, whether to rent or buy. With prices pushed up due to the inflated demand caused by tourism, the average price of a house in Cornwall is now £340,000, which is almost 20% higher than the UK average, and yet the typical wage in Cornwall is almost 30% lower than the UK average. The result is that too many local people are simply priced out of the market.
The situation in the rental market is only slightly better, with rents typically being 10% above the UK average outside London. It was therefore good news that the local housing allowance will be unfrozen and increased, as announced by the Chancellor in last week’s autumn statement, and that will be welcome news in Cornwall. The impact of all that is that too many people, especially our young people, have found it impossible to remain in the town or village that they were born and grew up in. Too few properties are available, and they will almost always be unaffordable.
Wider impacts might not be immediately obvious. For example, parish councils are increasingly responsible for more local services. One that contacted me only last week, Mevagissey Parish Council, is an excellent example of one such local council that is trying to do more for its community but is increasingly having to do so with less.
Local councils that do not have the general power of competence are restricted in what they can spend local taxpayers’ money on. If there is no specific statutory authority, the council can use what is called free resource. The free resource is calculated by multiplying a sum per elector by the number of electors, with the sum being set every year by Government. With an increasing number of residential properties being repurposed for holiday homes or second homes, there is a consequential reduction in the number of electors and, hence, a reduction in the free resource limit, meaning that parish councils and communities like Mevagissey are increasingly limited in what they can spend their funds on, leading to cuts in services that are often vital for those communities.
To put that in context, I have some statistics, provided by the Office for National Statistics, on the number of second homes or empty properties in communities in my constituency. In Newquay, the surfing capital of the UK and a very large town for Cornwall, 12% of properties are second homes; in St Goran parish, which is renowned for its Cornish gig club, the figure is 19%; in Mevagissey, the second most productive fishing port in Cornwall, the figure is 24%; and in the river port of Fowey, the figure is 28%. Twenty-eight per cent of properties are second homes in Fowey.
It is difficult for local authorities to calculate the numbers of holiday lets, but the numbers will be significant additions to these figures. As a flavour of the scale of the issue, CPRE estimated last year that short-term holiday listings in Cornwall grew by 661% in the five years to September 2021.
I have met Airbnb, our largest short-term letting accommodation provider, on several occasions to discuss how it, as an industry leader, can operate in a more responsible way, because there is a worrying trend, particularly since the pandemic, of landlords finding it far more profitable to put their properties on the holiday rental market over the summer season, leading to a significant rise in the number of no-fault evictions in March and April each year in our coastal communities. That results in many local people needing to find somewhere to live and often having to move out of the community in which they have been living, with all the upheaval that that brings to family life.