How committed to rural communities is the government?

Thursday, 26 March 2009 5:39 PM

This week the government announced its proposals to help those living in rural communities, particularly by providing affordable housing.

Following the Taylor review, housing minister Margaret Beckett announced the government would do more to help those living in rural areas, and in particular concentrate on the difficulty of buying a first home in rural areas, where prices can be ten times the average salary.

However, the government seemed to ignore an essential part of the review.

Despite recommendations to a trial period limiting second homes in National Parks, the government said: "there are more innovative ways of providing the affordable homes that rural communities need without interfering with the legitimate rights of second home owners".

But this appears to miss the crucial problem behind the plight of first time buyers in rural areas; that house prices are pushed up by those who are able to afford second homes, essentially driving them out of their own housing market.

In Pembrokeshire's National Park for example, which is home to Britain's only 'almost all coastal' national park, the house prices far exceed the average wage, with young people forced elsewhere to afford their first home. A halt to second home purchases could do much to reduce the cost of housing, and allow the local people to re-enter the market.

Without such measures, the ageing population witnessed in many of the National Parks will continue to increase, forming 'ghost towns' in the winter months when holiday homes lay empty.

Second home owners do contribute to the National Parks; providing an essential tourism industry and helping farming communities survive when Foot and Mouth would otherwise have bankrupted them. But what the holiday-makers come for - the sense of community, the local produce fairs, the quaintness and cosiness and the well-maintained parks - would all but vanish if the next generation are driven out by inflated house prices.

Those wanting to buy their first home need to be helped back into their local market, and not by erecting hundreds of more affordable homes, but by allowing the existing housing stock to reach a sensible, affordable level, and then helping those with a deposit onto the first rung of the property ladder.

With second home owners still being allowed to flood local communities, the rural first time buyer doesn't stand a chance.

What about the legitimate rights of the local rural communities?

Sarah Garrod

Tags:
• buying
,
• housing policy