Local housing crisis talks with Minister – MPs call for action

Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly’s housing crisis will be centre stage in Westminster tomorrow morning (Tuesday 1st April). All six Cornish MPs and officials from Cornwall and Scilly Councils will meet Housing & Planning Minister, Matthew Pennycook MP. 

The meeting was secured earlier this year when Andrew George MP challenged the Prime Minister to put right a system his government inherited from the Conservatives. Mr George explained how distorted the system had become, pointing out that “over £500 million of taxpayers’ money has been handed to holiday-home owners in Cornwall in the last decade, while the housing crisis for local families has reached its worst state in living memory.” 

Mr George said, “The Prime Minister was right when he said that ‘those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden’, but that’s the opposite of what has happened in our housing system. I’m urging the Minister to: 

1. End the multi-million tax loophole bonanza for second homeowners who’ve flipped their properties to become holiday lettings where they pay no tax; 
2. Introduce planning restrictions on homes being used as second or holiday homes; 
3. Establish a register of holiday lets and Airbnbs; 
4. Permit Cornwall to set housing development targets to meet local need rather than (as now) developers’ greed; 
5. Help unlock the shovel-ready projects with planning permission which could now deliver thousands of homes for locals which families across Cornwall and Scilly desperately need; and 
6. To help secure the investment needed to grow the capacity and skills base of Cornwall’s construction sector. 

“Tomorrow (1st April), the government finally implements the policy of doubling council tax on second homes. Though this has been a hard-won policy change that I’ve campaigned on for years, our delegation hopes to persuade the government it must go much further. As I often point out, the curtailment of freedoms for second home owners isn’t motivated by the politics of envy. It’s simply the politics of social justice. We live in a free country where people should of course be free to purchase more homes for their personal use than they need, but we should also have the freedom to use tax, planning, and other tools to balance the impact of the market-distorting and accommodation-restricting consequences of those investment choices. 

“Turning around this crisis is a mammoth task, but it’s vitally important we do all we can to help the tens of thousands of local families whose lives are blighted by the serious unfairness of the system.”