Second home crackdown planned for Wales

The Welsh Government will set out plans to address the impact of second home ownership on communities in Wales.

Julie James, minister for climate change, will announce the "three-pronged approach" to the Welsh Parliament today.

This will include addressing the issue of affordable and available housing in Wales.

National and local taxation systems will be used to ensure second home owners make a "fair" contribution to communities, the Welsh Government says.

A statutory registration scheme for holiday accommodation is also part of the approach, as well as examining planning laws.

Such measures will feature in a pilot in Wales, expected to begin later this year, in an area set to be decided in the summer.

They will then be evaluated before being considered for rollout across Wales.

Work on a registration scheme for all holiday accommodation and a consultation on changes to local taxes will also begin over the summer.

Ms James said:

"The continuing rise of house prices mean people, especially younger generations, can no longer afford to live in the communities they have grown up in.

"A high concentration of second homes or holiday lets can have a very detrimental impact on small communities, and in some areas could compromise the Welsh language being spoken at a community level.

"We have already taken strides on some of these issues - last year we became the only nation in the UK to give local authorities the power to introduce a 100% council tax levy on second homes.

"But the urgency and gravity of this situation calls for further intervention, which means real and ambitious actions are delivered at pace, to inject fairness back into the housing system."

Ms James visited St David's in Pembrokeshire on Monday to hear how money raised from the council tax levy had been used to build 18 affordable homes for local people.

She said this demonstrated how community action and government policy could "bring fairness back into our housing market".

The Welsh Government's plans take recommendations from a report by Dr Simon Brooks, associate professor in the school of management at Swansea University, which was published earlier this year.

At the beginning of 2020, it was estimated that there were 24,423 second homes in Wales that could be taxed on that basis.

Government figures from that year suggest second homes and holiday lets were more than 10% of the housing stock in Gwynedd, 9.15% of the stock in Pembrokeshire and 8.26% of it in Anglesey.

Dr Brooks' report warns that both Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic will increase pressure on the housing market in Wales and urges ministers to take "radical action" in communities already affected by second homes.

He states there is evidence the second home "problem" affects four county council areas - Gwynedd, Pembrokeshire, Anglesey and Ceredigion - more than others.

Three of these are considered to form the core of traditional Welsh-speaking Wales, while Pembrokeshire also has "linguistically sensitive neighbourhoods", Dr Brooks says.

The Welsh Government, as part of its approach to second homes, is due to publish a Welsh Language Community Plan for consultation this autumn.

Ms James said it was part of measures to "kick-start a summer of action" to establish how to tackle the issue of second homes.

"I am calling on all political parties across the Senedd to get involved in this, as we look to empower our communities to exercise their right to live in good quality homes, wherever they are in Wales," she added.