Pembrokeshire second home owner says 300% council tax premium is a ‘kick’

by Teleri Glyn Jones

Second homes are an emotive issue- with rural and coastal areas of Wales fearing both the Welsh language and their communities are being hollowed out because young people can’t afford to buy homes in their local area.

Coupled with the fact that those very same rural communities are so reliant on tourism, you have a thorny political issue.

The Labour Welsh government has been accused in the past of not doing enough to tackle these tensions and to deal with the root cause of them- a lack of affordable homes.

But in recent years there has been a more interventionist approach, with councils given the power to increase council tax on second homes and empty properties.

Here we see the potential consequences of those actions, and they appear to be having the desired effect – but of course the real measure of success will be whether those former second homes become family homes for local people.

If this was an easy problem to fix though, it would have been done by now. And there are many who fear the unintended consequences of creating a hostile environment to second home owners and holiday-makers.

Could tourism, the golden goose that sustains so many jobs along Wales’ beautiful coastline, be the collateral damage of these well-meaning policies?