To Suggest Highland Clearances 2.0?

[buddhasbelly]

I live in a part of rural Scotland that has experienced a huge rise in demand and a huge rise in house prices since about 6 months in to Covid.

Properties have been sold for 50% over asking price. New build prices are up an additional £20-30k on pre-pandemic prices. Yes the costs of timber rose but have since plummeted again. Homes are being advertised as "ideal Airbnb opportunity." 2nd homes are lying empty and those that are relocating are able to pay well over asking price.

But wages haven't risen in the area. Average saleries for the area are ~£22-£26k.

I don't blame people relocating, it helps the regional economy and they've worked hard to save and buy what could well be out of their reach in eg SE England.

But this isn't sustainable. Developers stating they are building more houses to ease the problem are just inflating their prices.

Communities are dying off in tourist hotspots where holiday homes are now the norm. Long term rentals in such areas are few and far between with houses being switched to holiday lets.

It doesn't look set to stop. Prices are predicted to rise 9% again this year.

Huge swathes of land are being bought up to be "rewilded" by companies looking to offset their carbon tax. One such company who spouts the UK prime minister's dad as investor has stated that sustainable property will be built on the land bought and they forsee 40% of their income being derived from this. Except it's property in the form of hunting lodges and high end Real Estate.

Employers in the area cannot find accommodation for their staff.

We have tried to buy but have accepted that this may no longer be an option. Wages don't keep up with the rise in house prices.

AIBU to suggest this is the Highland Clearances 2.0?

There, are things that can be done. Lake District and Cornwall have controls on who buys houses H&I could introduce that and/or additional stamp duty on 2nd homes and use money to support community. I'm sure lots more ways. I wouldn't try to dissuade the upmarket holiday developments as this provides employment and its not at LD levels they still need more work

You're right that the first clearance was about making way for a more profitable use of land. But the loss of EU funding makes it extremely difficult to sustain a decent infrastructure for rural communities. Small schools, health care facilities and road and rail maintenance are very expensive. Should taxes paid by the bulk of the population living in cramped accommodation in busy cities be used to fund Highland communities? If so, should these city tax payers then be prohibited from also enjoying the benefits of the countryside?

I'm not against rewilding as a concept. We've paid farmers over the odds to produce (and not produce) excess food up till now: why not pay them to produce 'nature' and biodiversity instead. You've really swallowed Boris and Carrie's snake oil haven't you.

@EishetChayil

You're calling for a new wave of genocide? That's a really awful way of putting it.

No the OP is doing nothing of the kind

She is comparing the two situations

Feels like we've had the equivalent of "highland clearances" in Edinburgh to be honest. My friendship group all grew up in what was the shitty council estates which the council very kindly demolished, redeveloped, and priced the lot of us into the Lothians.

Not that I'm complaining. Edinburgh feels like it's for tourists and students now.

But this is happening all over and I think it's only going to keep getting worse with remote working.

OK I'm coming in from the perspective that I'm in the process of buying a big house in a touristy village (in Perthshire). We are only moving from Central Belt and it will be our full time home (family of 4). We are affording it from running our own professional services (tech) business in Scotland. (Not millionaires, but comfortably off.) We definitely are part of what you are describing.

I think in the longer term wfh is a permanent shift that will make living in these areas much more of a practical proposition to professional/knowledge-worker working families. So I suspect that the 'lived in' homes will increase vs second/holiday lets. But you are right that this will change the character of the local populations. In the long term I also think that the gap between professional salaries and trades will shrink (it already is?) - basically, the professionals value the trades and this will play out.

We imagine that we will shop local and get involved in the community. It's an area we know fairly well as weekend outdoor enthusiasts etc, so have at least some exisiting emotional link to it. We will still be commuting to town at least a couple of times a week each.

As our children grow up, I do imagine that they are likely to leave for uni or similar - but then much more likely to return because they may be able to work remotely, and are so used to maintaining remote friendships alongside f2f friendships. Or they might choose more of a traditional trade - maybe influenced by seeing what is around them in the more rural environment (can imagine that might particularly appeal one DC).

So yes I hear you. And I'm not 100% sure that what we are doing is fair. And I would support some kind of limit on second/empty homes (I think that can be problematic in many places - the Cornwall issues have been widely publicised). But I don't think that (any) community can be preserved forever without change.

It's not unique to the Highlands OP.

The London clearances have been going on largely unreported for years.

London is the epicentre of the UK's public health housing and homelessness emergency.

Many many second homes in London. Air bnbs, boltholes, and also loads of investments left empty all year round.

Unlike other parts of the country where reporting and public is sympathetic to the plight of locals - with media articles bemoaning locals being pushed out of their local communities, it is apparently ok to socially cleanse families and vulnerable individuals out of London, away from their local communities, families, and support networks.

To help give an idea of the size of the problem in London, there are huge numbers there on similar salaries to OPs. £22,000. Now if think that's bad in the Highlights, try that salary in London. Forget buying, many can't even rent (anywhere safe or legal).

• the professionals should be 'the professions'

Rural and other beautiful areas being majority second homers or tourism and the resulting loss of communities is a problem, OP.

The BS ‘rewilding’ is a different but equally worrying issue.

I don’t live in Scotland or a community particularly affected but it concerns me too.

The problem is compounded by the likes of the Nimby Lib Dems - who want to support refugees....but not in their own leafy backyards. Despite their less over crowded or polluted areas being far more welcoming (and healing) for traumatised refugees, than London's cramped and often fairly unleasant homeless accommodation.

Many newly arrived refugees are being put up in the part of the UK with the very worse housing crisis. Two thirds of all of England's homeless families are in London, and social housing waiting times of 10-15 years.

On a related note, the many people pushed out of London and the wider SE. Where do others expect them to go?

@Tealightsandd I completely sympathise with those on lower income in London. It's a horrible situation all round.

I guess within the Highlands context I've given it's because of the very rapid increase in 2nd homes/holiday lets in such a short space of time. The Nc500 route has compounded the issue but our local authority gave it the go ahead and here we are. But no my attitude has been oh well to those folks in London, until the tables are turned and now I'm feeling the same effects. Very much a "ignore it doesn't affect me" attitude, until yes now it does. My ignorance to the issue pre covid is pathetic.

@CouldIhaveaword yes that's the thing isn't it. This part of the country isn't just for those living in it, it should be open to everyone but I guess the current set up makes airbnb owners (either local or otherwise) more money instead of hospitality businesses that employ people locally other than a cleaner. But maybe changing consumer tastes no longer want hotels.

We need to build businesses that are away from hospitality but that in turn needs the infrastructure of fast and reliable Internet, delivery charges that aren't sky high and reliable road networks to support it. If there was some intervention on empty homes that is being called for by members of Scottish parliament, I feel we may have a chance to build a sustainable economy but I don't think that intervention will come quick enough.

Nowhere has suffered as badly as London - the data on the extent of severity of the public health housing and homelessness emergency there is stark (and sobering).

But it has now begun to spread elsewhere and will therefore get more attention. The common problem - in London, Cornwall, the Highlands appears to be second homes in areas of high housing demand, increased conversion of private rents into airbnbs, and particularly in London empty investments. And growing populations (socially cleansed from other parts of the UK and/or migrants) who all need and deserve decent affordable housing.

The answer to the issue is to boost the construction industry with a (UK wide) mass social housing build.

My ignorance to the issue pre covid is pathetic.

You can't blame yourself. There was until now only limited reporting on the issue.

The Welsh government is also seeking to address this issue

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-59387876

I sympathise OP. We live on the edge of a national park and A.O.N.B. in the North. We are finally in a position to buy a small house (2 up 2 down for family of 3) but keep getting outbid by cash buyers who want second homes. There are plenty of large expensive barn conversions and farm houses for sale but no one can afford those and they are probably too big for the second home brigade that just want a small bolt hole. I don't know what the answer is. I don't expect to pay less for my property for being local but it would be nice to be considered ahead of the second home buyer.

There are two second homes on our road and they just lie empty expcept for a couple of weeks in the summer. It just seems so wrong? I don't have such an issue with the holiday lets which bring a steady income to the village.

The other issue I have, and I appreciate this is a completely unreasonable view point, is that the good weather months of May-Sept often feel like a real reward for enduring the brutal weather the rest of the year. When someone just rocks up for two sunny weeks in August it just really rattles me. Where were you when we had the power cuts and we all had to go queue to use the emergency gas hob in the village hall to boil a kettle? Where were you when we all had to clear the roads of snow so the kids could get to school? How did you help when the village shop was about to be shut and we had to form a cooperative to keep it going?

It's too late to "get involved with the community" when you retire here (classic line from Escape to the Country). We need able bodied young people and families living here to keep everything going.

Rant over. I appreciate some of what I have said is unreasonable. ButI think unreasonable circumstances lead to some unreasonable thoughts.

Cornwall and the Isle of Wight seriously suffer finding accommodation for their lowly paid staff.

There's many areas of the UK where people can not afford to live or work.

What's your solution OP? People move from eg SE England precisely because they've been priced out of that region. People want to live there because it's the best part of the country but can't afford to. Where should they go, if they can't afford to live where they want? They have to move somewhere cheaper like northern England or Scotland.

Morningstar ling, the issue isn't so much people moving on a permanent basis to live and work in an area, be part of the community, their children going to local schools, using local businesses. It's the people who buy second homes which they only use a few weeks a year, or this who buy up properties to use as holiday let's. The visitors who stay in the holiday lets don't send their children to local schools, use the hardware stores, local library etc. It's these issues which are causing the hollowing out of communities, the pricing out of locals.

@MorningStarling I've said in my op and throughout that relocating isn't the issue, that this supports regional economies, that the issue is 2nd home and airbnb buying...

I don't have a solution, but I'd like it if the government did.

But as you've said, as people from SE get priced out and have to move to NE England, Scotland, where do the people go from the cheaper areas of NE England, Scotland when they're priced out? There needs to be some sort of coordinated solution to housing but I can't see it happening fast enough.

Yes, yabvu. The Highland Clearances was genocide - the systematic attempted wipeout of a language, a culture and people. Please don’t belittle it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

Exactly this, although I agree that there are very negative changes happening in the Highlands.

Andy Wightman is worth following on Twitter for many of the themes on this thread eg: rewilding and the centuries-old practices of patriarchal landowners from outwith the Highlands doing what they fancy with our land for our "benefit" and seeing us as nothing more than a resource to be exploited.

@gallumph yes I could have phrased what I was trying to say better. I guess that at its core when looking at landlords trying to increase land value regardless of what it does to communities, this core theme is what seems to be happpening now with little government intervention to control it.

Thing is if I had worked in a major city and had the money to buy a second home up here, who's to say I wouldn't because there is little from government to say why this is damaging to rural communities nor any intervention to stop it from happening.

Yes to Andy Wightman.

patriarchal landowners from outwith the Highlands doing what they fancy with our land for our "benefit" and seeing us as nothing more than a resource to be exploited.
But people who own land usually expect to make money from it.
Not many will buy land to do nothing, unless they are extremely rich and owning land doing nothing has no impact on their life.
The Scottish Gov is busy covering land round here with conifer plantations and wind farms - apart from air bnbs, who won't want to be in the windfarms, it means no industry not even farming for locals. It''s not as easy as saying if the big landowners left all would be rosy - and if you really rewild it means impassable hillsides covered with bracken and brambles.
We should have a public debate on the best way forward. I like the big landowners as they want to make money from grouse shooting etc and that means hills left as they are - a few sheep, bracken kept under control.

@YourenutsmiLord

patriarchal landowners from outwith the Highlands doing what they fancy with our land for our "benefit" and seeing us as nothing more than a resource to be exploited. But people who own land usually expect to make money from it. Not many will buy land to do nothing, unless they are extremely rich and owning land doing nothing has no impact on their life. The Scottish Gov is busy covering land round here with conifer plantations and wind farms - apart from air bnbs, who won't want to be in the windfarms, it means no industry not even farming for locals. It''s not as easy as saying if the big landowners left all would be rosy - and if you really rewild it means impassable hillsides covered with bracken and brambles. We should have a public debate on the best way forward. I like the big landowners as they want to make money from grouse shooting etc and that means hills left as they are - a few sheep, bracken kept under control.

There have been threads on here about man made grouse moor habitats being awful for anything but grouse.

I wouldn't argue with that.
Conifer plantations are hopeless for wildlife.

@gallumph

Yes, that's a great interview with a wise head.

@derxa

I haven't swallowed any snake oil (I don't know what BJ and his wife have said about it). Perhaps naively I thought that ecological restoration could be an alternative source of income for farmers who are struggling to make a living from traditional farming methods. Much in the way that set-aside subsidies have been used in the past. But I take on board that "re-wilding' (I agree with AW that it's a problematic word) might be just one more fad for large-scale landowners, and I wasn't aware of big carbon off-setting schemes jumping on the bandwagon. We can't really use 'farmer' as a catch-all term to described those who own and manage land in rural area, I guess: the Duke of Buccleuch isn't really in the same group as my cousins who are scraping along trying to make a living on their place in Ayrshire.