Second Home owners doing sad faces in the press about council tax increase

[CornishTickler]

Just read an article online about the second home council tax increase and there are couples with sad faces saying it was without warning and is against their human rights! It wasn't, its been in the press and talked about by councils for over a year. It wasn't a surprise, areas with high levels of second homes knew it was coming.

I for one am glad about the tax. Our village has been destroyed by second home owners for years. A lot are badly maintained and empty for 80% of the year.

The argument that they bring extra income is also misleading. Most true second home owners who only visit a couple of times a year don't contribute much to the economy but are very vocal in interfering in local issues to the detriment of actual residents. One example (I'm not joking on this) was to oppose the planning of a local business that would benefit the community with jobs and tax revenue because of the endangered newts! luckily common sense prevailed but honestly they got very vocal and aggressive about it. It was mainly because they didn't want it to impact their second home.

Holiday makers bring revenue. Absentee second home owners do not.

Hopefully the second home tax increase will increase council tax revenue and help to support our community and vulnerable people.

Whining bastards in the Telegraph - sell it then if you're so hard done by, it's not compulsory to keep the second house on if you can't afford the costs

People can have a second home they will just be taxed more. That's more than fair.

Car owners have to pay tax on them.

Yes, of course it's the poorer people's fault they work and can't afford a home. And utterly unfair to expect homeowners maintain or participate in the community.

FFS, can posters hear themselves here?🙄

The Telegraph, home of the rich, famous and racist "sad face" community.

Recent highlights include castle dwelling, millionaire, Alexander Armstrong "feeling poor" because of VAT on private schools.😢

Erm sorry, who keeps on coming back asking for more leeway? I don't understand.

Can you hear how silly it is blaming second home owners for a shortage of housing without considering the other end of the market which is the seller who is a local? At some point locals starting being happy that they could get more money from a second home owner without caring or considering that they were in effect pricing out their own community.

I don’t have a second home and I can see the issues second home ownership causes (including in London), but this continued pretence that locals haven’t played their part in this situation is painful.

Bit like all those who took up the right to buy thus reducing the amount of social housing stock. I can see why a council home tenant who was able to do so would do so, but I can also see the issues that caused.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

(Obviously there are bigger issues around lack of house building, lack of funding (though again, those who voted for Brexit thus cutting off the EU funding their region benefited from need to take responsibility), and lack of non-seasonal employment.)

This isn't about owning a second home, it's about second home owners paying their dues.

Presumably the government has given the money to social housing providers as opposed to private developers.

you mean those well known not-for-profit builders that are everywhere?

By paying more council tax for services they don’t use or put pressure on? See the comment thread on how 80% of council spend is adult social care.

That all sounds a little petty to me.

You have heard of housing associations I take it?

Housing associations don’t actually build homes. They may work with developers to get them built but as I understand it, developers are often finding that if they are to meet the required proportion of social housing under their planning permission within an otherwise private development, they aren’t left with enough (if any) profit to make it worthwhile. So they don’t build anything…

They have a choice, which is a lot more than other people have. To pay up for necessary services or sell and increase their bank bank balances.🤷‍♀️

Oh, I must be imagining the 25 new social homes that have recently appeared in the field behind my house then- directly built by a housing association 🙄.

It's also my housing association, and I attend enough tenants' forums- and have talked to enough of its employees- up to and including the CEO- to know that they are, in fact, building the houses themselves rather than purchasing them from a developer, and that they're keen to build as many houses as funds allow, but that they operate on very tight margins owing to the Tories having slashed the funding they got from central government.

My dad was a quantity surveyor, and his firm had a lot of HAs as clients. Building houses. Directly.

Some councils are building new social housing, if they can afford it and if they haven't offloaded all their housing provision onto HAs (some have formed their own arms length HAs because I don't know, it probably makes sense somehow).

You are talking absolute fucking bollocks. HTH.

C'mon Ange - do something really great during your tenure of Office - convert 80% of all those planning permissions given to private developers to landbank and profit from into 'social housing'.

It's not actually a new idea, Keir Hardie was a forerunner after the First World War, leading to the first national social housing building programme and then the post WW2 'new towns' to house the bombed out nation.

Do we really need WW3 to get our arses and brains in gear to sort this out again?

Developers often get very creative with their numbers in order to make the development look "not viable". It's total bollocks, they still make huge profits.

This.

We need to take the provision of social housing completely out of the private developer's hands AND the councils too weak to oppose them.

They recalled Parliament today to protect British made 'virgin steel' and the people of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire as well the gov should.

The Gov. the Labour Gov, should also evoke the same Powers that the Electorate have given them to sort out the Housing Crisis. Compulsory purchase of all undeveloped landbanked 'permission-given' to be used for building social housing now would be a very useful thing to do.

Meanwhile, the second home owners can reconcile their own life-choices.

Well this tourist doesnt, I wade through a lot of holiday cottages, I go on holiday a lot and I research a lot of places and many dont have sufficient or adequate transport for them without a car, you might be able to get around as a tourist but you wouldnt make it to work and back as a daily regular thing. Many dont have parking, you have to have some arrangement in a town car park somewhere, lots of seaside towns have this arrnagement we have found.

I am not an expert, but my understanding from discussions with people who know is that not for profit firms cannot meet all of the gov'ts house building targets. The gov't/ LA's also need partnerships with for-profit developers and housebuilders due to their ownerships/control of large parcels of land in key locations. They in turn are driven by profit/return on investment which can conflict with 'affordable' housing and other requirements. They might be required to provide the infrastructure - roads/ services, schools, community spaces etc. All of that will eat into the profitability of the project potentially making it unattractive the builder / developer. This can lead to land banking, where the developer chooses to just hold onto the land and wait for more favourable conditions/ terms. Add in skills shortages, more stringent legislation around house building, interest rates and challenging macro economic conditions (now and the last coupe of years) and building homes is no longer a straightforward activity.

.

See the comments about 2nd homes being somewhere posters want to retire to. Does adult social care suddenly appear when they retire there? Where does it come from?

So not petty at all. On the contrary, it's really quite important and forward looking.

That's lovely for you, but I don't think we should underestimate how a huge second home market destroys communities. Both by making them half empty for chunks of the year and also by meaning families end up scattered. I'm certain this is part of the reason so many people struggle with their well being.
A sense of community, and family, is worth more than thousands of self help books and yoga classes

I don’t have a second home. Even if I won the lottery, I don’t think I would get one as it’d just be a pain to look after.

Anyway I think the problems caused by their ownership (in some cases) need to be tackled a bit more carefully. Council tax mainly goes on adult social care. The main benefit that most people get from paying council tax is having their bins collected, sometimes. So the 2nd home owners aren’t using adult social care in their 2nd home and they are presumably putting bins out a lot less than ordinary homeowners. Mega council tax charged to them does seem a bit weird and bash the rich type politics.

Perhaps councils should impose limits on the number of properties that can be bought as 2nd homes. Once the limit is reached, then homes can only be bought as 2nd homes if another 2nd homeowner sells theirs.

It’s a difficult balance I think. People are allowed to spend their own money on whatever they want. Things are not equal. Some children are walking around in expensive clothing whilst others have shoes that are too small/have holes in. It doesn’t mean we stick a 100% tax on clothing from certain brands like mini boden or whatever. I mean mini boden clothing doesn’t even have VAT on it - but nobody actually needs luxury clothign.

Councils have sat back and let this happen. I don’t think it’s fair to then whack 2nd home owners with mega council tax, unless this was a published policy prior to them buying the 2nd home.

Society is certainly unfair, but this will not be tacked by punitive taxation on certain people. That will just give the councils a bit more income to waste.

Exactly.
Plus as house prices soar it becomes harder to find affordable housing for carers etc

And people in thatched cottages definitely use more than their fair share of the fire service round here.

Plus of course everyone uses the roads and benefits from policing. And all those LA services support the workers in the/ lovely pub /delicatessen/gift shop and all their families .

It's incredibly silly to think that council tax just pays for social care and bins

They maintain the parks and playgrounds and beaches.

The roads

Council tax contributes towards the fire service and policing.

It contributes to education and youth services , bus services, cycle routes, village halls and libraries.

When you parachute in for your weekend away you expect to find nice pubs and shops etc but those people actually live there and need all the services to support their lives.

Plus part of the reason the care budget soars in expensive places is because it becomes harder to recruit workers because housing costs are so high. Plus people are more likely to need elderly care if their children can't afford to live near them. So high second home ownership compounds the problem and increases the social care bill