Staff shortages in tourist areas.

[StaffShortages]

I've just returned from the Lake District and there's a severe shortage of staff, partly due to Brexit but also apparently because of a lack of affordable accommodation. One chip shop was offering £14 an hour for a counter assistant. Many restaurants shut for a day or two because of staff shortages.

Is the same happening in other touristy parts of the UK?

A lot of businesses want to hire 16-19 year olds as it's cheaper but seem to also expect experience as well. So a zero hour contract, low pay, busy environment and must be experienced too. It's rare they'll hire the 40 year old who wants a hospitality job, but get the kids in for cheap work. But you can guarantee the businesses will stand there head scratching when these young people go off to school/college/uni/further employment.

That's just part of the churn, and it's not a hugely problematic one in tourist areas. Holiday season coincides with school holidays, obviously. You get kids in for up to four years seasonally when you need them, and don't need to worry about providing them with permanent work. Generally all happy to do weekend shifts too through the year.

It works just fine, provided that there's a strong local economy where parents of 0-18yo can afford to live.

We live on a new build estate in a small University city which is not allowed to be used as HMOs, and intended to encourage local families as the houses in the area have slowly become student lets. The parents of the students have bought up the houses instead, so it's still become a mostly student estate.

There wouldn’t be a problem with whole-home holiday lets if the numbers could be managed so that locals weren’t forced out, and if they were taxed as businesses. It’s the lack of control and the crazy profits making them so much more attractive to landlords than residential letting that’s the issue.

When I was in my teens, we were able to work from age 13. I came from a small tourist village and every cafe was staffed by teens at the weekend. We started doing washing up at 13 then waited on tables at 16. The owner supervised from her office upstairs. It's a shame most places state 16/18 years or over now. I had great fun and learned a lot from my teenage years spent working in hotels and cafes.

It works just fine, provided that there's a strong local economy where parents of 0-18yo can afford to live.
And/or transport.
My DC's school is in a Lake District town where almost every cafe etc has "staff wanted" signs in the window at present. But my DC, like the majority of the school's pupils don't live in town, they are bussed in from surrounding villages. Outside term time there is no transport so unless the parents can drop off and pick up reliably every day they can't take those jobs. If there were reliable, affordable buses I think a lot of those jobs would be snapped up by 6th formers.

Fully agree. What is more crazy is that local councils aren't checking the holiday lets to ensure they're registered for business rates, and are still happily collecting "domestic" waste and recycling whereas them being "businesses", the owners should be making their own arrangements and paying for waste disposal (like other businesses have to!).

Even more stupid is that during covid, councils welcomed holiday let owners to register for business rates which enabled them to claim covid support grants, which were huge in some areas (£28k per rental unit), and far, far more than the business rates they had to pay once registered. Those councils didn't even try to back date business rate bills to the date the properties started being let out!

At the very least, I think covid grants should have been restricted to holiday lets which had been properly registered (for business rates AND HMRC taxes), and even better, also checked for fire/safety regulations. I can't quite believe that the Govt allowed holiday let owners to "late register" their properties for business rates to get the grants, but at the same time deliberately excluded 3 million freelancers and self employed, many for the reason that they hadn't been registered as self employed for long enough! The mind boggles!

Even more stupid is that holiday lets aren't classed by HMRC as a "trade" so the owners don't pay NIC on their profits like other businesses have to. Madness! All I can think is that a lot of politicians have holiday let businesses, so are happy for generous tax rules that benefit them!

Wow, there's a lot of hate for AirBnB on here - is it just them, or is it all holiday rentals that you all object to?

Yes, I know there are problems of affordable housing for locals (not just down to holiday rentals of course), and sometimes of antisocial behaviour, so maybe some regulation is needed. But it has always suited us better to have cottages/flats than hotels/B&Bs

• cost is much lower
• meals are easier (and obviously cheaper), particularly with children, or fussy eaters/special diets, or when there is only one place serving food within a reasonable distance, and you'd have to eat the same thing every day
• easier to make packed lunches too
• we get a place to chill as well as sleep (some hotels have this but cheaper ones don't, and I don't want to have to sit on my bed to read a book all week)
• some leisure activities are usually available, like board games

Recently prices have shot up and availability has gone down for both holiday cottages and hotels. I don't think it's just down to covid, it was happening before that. It's tricky now to book anything last minute, unless you want top end or the dregs. In some places it's the same for attractions, having to book in advance, and it's not just a UK thing. Why is this? Are we all better off, so there is more demand?

@DuesToTheDirt , as I pp, the amount of holiday lets (generally termed airbnb, but might not necessarily be actually being let through Airbnb) in the area I'm from is ridiculous. It's a quarter of the housing stock.

They're not granny annexes or summer houses, but what were family homes. Houses I played in or stayed over in as a kid.
The number of children in the village has dropped dramatically.

The only people who gain anything is the owner, and the pub might sell a few meals. Someone might be employed to clean between lets. That's it.

Basically, they are killing the community.

Any housing that comes on the market is not affordable, unless you are relocating from a more expensive area, or are going to let it as a holiday let.

A single storey 2-bed dwelling is on the market for £400K. The average salary for the county is £32K.

@DuesToTheDirt

Recently prices have shot up and availability has gone down for both holiday cottages and hotels. I don't think it's just down to covid, it was happening before that. It's tricky now to book anything last minute, unless you want top end or the dregs. In some places it's the same for attractions, having to book in advance, and it's not just a UK thing. Why is this? Are we all better off, so there is more demand?

Several reasons. Yes, a lot of people are very well off and can afford multiple holidays. Lots of people are still refusing to fly due to covid risks or the ongoing delays/staff shortages at airports, increased risk of lost luggage, etc, so are "staycationing" in their home country rather than flying (also, of course, the environmental impact of flying is more well known these days). Costs of holidaying abroad have rocketed, making a staycation in the UK more attractive. Loss of UK hotel beds due to many closing down and never re-opening after covid, many being closed due to housing the homeless and asylum seekers, etc. As for booking attractions, that's been a trend for many years, long before covid, but covid has accelerated that trend, especially with having to control numbers of participants, the benefits of the attraction to have people "guaranteed" to turn up on the booked day even in bad weather, etc.

Basically, so much has changed over the past few years, with the expansion of apps and the internet, covid, working from home, more and more people getting in on the act by buying homes and renting them out as FHLs as investments (due to low interest rates and poor investment performance in recent years). It's all been a perfect storm really.

What, all of them?

Anyway, perhaps it is time they were brought back into productivity then.

It isn't ridiculous and wrong. I live in the countryside as it happens, and am also an active member of the Wildlife Trusts, and also work in a plant nursery. Oh yes, and there are about 200 trees on my land.

@RhymesWithTangerine , sheep do not eat trees, and trees generally don't grow on hillsides. The hillsides are not suitable for house building or for monoculture arable.

@DuesToTheDirt I gave my views on the subject upthread, but in a nutshell no, I don't think all self catering options are equal (though I agree people, me included, are using the term Airbnb as something of a generalisation.)
I think there is a huge difference between staying in a converted outbuilding on a farm where the owner greets you from the adjacent farmhouse, and renting a regular house in a residential area where an agent meets you or you pick up the key from a safe and never see a human being.
I live in a place with lots of holiday lets but I also prefer to self cater on my own holidays so I see both sides. Generally I try to choose places that would clearly not be normal family homes, like a conversion or purpose built holiday lodge, and wherever possible somewhere that I can confirm is in local ownership.

@Namechange62846 , it got plenty going for it.
There are some places there that are nice,
The park in the photo has a cracking view of Windsor Castle. There are other parks - Herschel Park is pretty.
The town centre is very run down and some areas are rough.
It still has grammar schools
It has plenty of places to visit nearby - the Chilterns, Windsor, Legoland, London.
Parts of Slough are nearer to Windsor Castle/railway station than parts of Windsor are.

If you drive through or see it from the train, it doesn't look great. It's quite urban in feel so probably compares to somewhere like West Drayton or Hayes & Harlington rather than Windsor or Maidenhead.

No-one has suggested that. However, creating lovely garden cities would be a huge improvement on the current green belt.

I think some areas do licence holiday lets. I was in a tourist town in Scotland earlier and noticed a planning permission notice on a front door which detailed permission was being sought for it to be used as a holiday let.

It's not Brexit, it is also a problem in Ireland as a pp said, in Germany they've got a shortage of lifeguards (if your kids can swim well and speak German, there's a good option for them!) and in Spain.

Letting all the local accommodation being used for holiday and second homes has not helped. I disagree with the post above about green field development - we don't need it, we just need a redistribution of current housing stock as well as bringing empty houses back into use.

The rudeness and entitlement of customers also means that people don't want to do the jobs. My ds wouldn't do it (he is working as a lifeguard this summer) and his GF does but has some tales to tell of rude people (she works in a shop in York as it happens).

And cafes should be more long-term in their thinking - instead of thinking "it's no good training someone new because they'll leave in September" they should think "they'll leave in September but will probably need a job next year as well so will come back if I treat them right".

Sheep do not eat trees. Yes, yes they do…

Why do you think there are no trees in those fields?! Cos the tree seeds don’t fall there…? Or is it cos the little tree shoots get chomped.

It is morons like this that should not be allowed anywhere near planning. And the hill remark is equally stupid.

Agree, and I live in an upland area. Sheep definitely eat trees (and plenty of other vegetation besides grass).

I grew up on a sheep farm. We must have had particularly sheep-proof trees, as they were left alone.

Trees tend not to grow on hillsides because the hills don't have the depth of soil to support the trees, not because the sheep have eaten them

Established trees don't get eaten because sheep don't eat the hard bark.

But saplings - yes, of course sheep (and deer) eat them.

So you end up with a handful of old established trees, which will eventually die through time/disease/storm damage, and no viable new ones growing to full size. That was a large contributor to the Caledonian forest being destroyed. It's what has shaped the upland environment in much of the UK.

Plenty of places where trees grow on pretty steep hillsides. It's not so much the angle as the soil/rock composition. In places like North Wales and the Lake District, many hills are slate with very little soil on top (partly due to them being exposed to weather), so basically very little will grow without soil. In other places, such as Yorkshire Dales, some of the "hillsides" are protected from weather exposure, so there can be quite a depth of soil, thus plenty of shrubs/trees.

It's also possible to build houses on pretty steep hillsides, again, look at the Yorkshire towns and villages, many of which are built into pretty steep valleys. Trouble is that it's easier, quicker and cheaper to build on flat fields, than it is to build on the side of a valley, hence why developers want flat fields!

How is this even a conversation @BridgeOverTheRiverWye ? You can’t seriously believe sheep don’t eat trees and then claim to have grown up on a farm…?

Did no one explain trees have seeds? And then they grow into little plants, and then get bigger and bigger?

THIS is why we can’t have a sensible discussion about planning in the UK. People just do not understand the countryside and how it interacts with people.