Local people 'squeezed out of countryside'

The government should end council tax breaks for second home owners, an MP said yesterday. Skip related content

Tim Farron (Lib Dem, Westmorland and Lonsdale) called on ministers to allow local authorities to place additional charges on houses used as holiday homes during a Westminster Hall debate on the issue of housing in rural areas.

He said there are villages in his constituency where the majority of properties are second homes.

This was leading to communities losing "thirty per cent of our young people every year, and they don't come back".

His Cumbria constituency includes the Lake District destinations of Windemere and Kendal.

Farron told MPs that the lack of affordable housing in the region has led to a situation where people on middle and low incomes "are being squeezed out of these beautiful places".

Andrew Turner (Con, Isle of Wight) told MPs that wages were £5,000 lower in rural areas while house prices for first time buyers are £16,000 higher.

"Local people, particularly the young, are unable to afford rising costs on lower incomes and are forced to move away from villages to find cheaper housing," he said.

"We may find that affordable housing is moving not simply elsewhere on the island but to the mainland.

"Such an exodus fragments communities and families."

Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives) accused the government of "preferring the dead hand of central control" to a more "subtle and localised approach".

Criticising the government's regional spatial strategies, George said:

"Simply building more and more houses without recognising and adapting to the intricacies of the situation in rural areas is part of the problem."

The Conservative party's housing spokesman Grant Shapps also attacked central targets.

"If we put local people in control, trust them and give them the power, tools and incentives, I guarantee that more homes will be built," he said.

"If the minister will not do that, we will certainly be happy to."

Communities minister Barbara Follett praised said the government is investing £7.5 billion in housing as a whole.

Schemes including KickStart, designed to get stalled building projects going again, were helping to provide rural homes, she said.

2,500 homes had been delivered in the past year in hamlets and villages in the past year.

Responding to MPs' concerns about the reluctance of banks including those supported by public capital to lend to first time buyers, Ms Follett said:

"I have meetings with the banks to ensure that those who wish to buy affordable homes can get the credit that they need to do so."

Shapps, whose constituency borders Follett's, accused the government's regional spatial strategy of holding up homes locally.

It was, Ms Follett contended, "the fact that the county of Hertfordshire is taking us to court over the RSS that is delaying homes being built".