Rural families struggle to find homes as holiday lets surge

Rural families are being deprived of housing by a 1,000% surge in the number of short-term lets and holiday properties, according to countryside charity CPRE.

The huge increase was revealed in a survey by the charity – formerly the Campaign to Protect Rural England – which looked at property tenures over a five-year period between 2016 and 2021.

It showed that 148,000 homes, stood empty for large parts of the year.  Most of them were in staycation hotspots, a CPRE spokesperson added.

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“Our data shows startling figures in locations such as Cornwall, Devon, South Lakeland and Northumberland,” the spokesperson said.

In the survey of property listings between 2016 and 2021, South Lakeland saw a 1,231% increase in short-term lets.

About half the families on waiting lists for social housing in the area could be homed if the holiday rentals were available on the property market, the spokesperson suggested.

In Cornwall, where short-term lets grew by 661% to 15,000 over the five-year period, all of the 15,000 waiting families could be housed.

Suffering

Crispin Truman, CPRE chief executive said there has been a massive shift into an unregulated short-term rentals market that didn’t exist six years ago.

“Across our most traditional rural communities, from Cornwall to Cumbria, homes that used to be rented to local families sit empty for much of the year.

“Hard-working people are suffering and they will not easily forgive a government that promised to level them up if it leaves them falling through the cracks of a broken system.”

The CPRE is, therefore, calling for tighter controls on second home ownership, including higher council tax and the requirement for short-term lets to have planning permission.

Additionally, the definition of “affordable” must be changed in national planning policy, with rents being tied to local incomes rather than market prices, Mr Truman said.