UK tourist destinations vow to end tourism | UK | News

Growing anti-tourism sentiment is spreading across some of Britain’s most popular holiday destinations, fuelled by the belief that the rise in holiday lets is worsening the housing crisis.

This year, stickers bearing an image of a burning house and the words “f**k your second home” have been seen in the Lake District, a sight police have described as “disturbing”.

Two years earlier, a wall in St Agnes, Cornwall, had been defaced with the message “no more second homes… our village is dying”, Telegraph reports.

Local councils have taken a stand against holiday let owners, making it increasingly difficult and expensive to own a second home by implementing new measures.

In 2022, Whitby Council voted to ban the purchase of new properties as second homes, mirroring a decision taken in St Ives, Cornwall.

Last year, Edinburgh introduced a licensing system for short-term lets. Gwynedd City Council in Wales took one of the most drastic measures, requiring owners to obtain planning permission to turn their property into a second home or holiday let.

Brighton and Hove councillors have unanimously agreed to investigate the “saturation” of Airbnbs, with Green councillor Ellen McLeay saying families had been pushed out of the city centre, leading to “ghost towns”.

Second home owners are gradually being eroded, reflecting the years-long crackdown on rental investment.

Local authorities are also using powers granted by central government to double or even triple council tax for second homes, leading to bills rising by thousands.

The second-home war has accelerated after the pandemic-driven property boom, when investors bought up seaside cottages and country retreats to rent out to holidaymakers.

As residents complained that communities were becoming ghost towns for half the year, the Conservative government became hostile to holiday home owners.

Michael Gove, the former housing secretary, last year expressed his despair at the transformation of seaside communities into “near-permanent Airbnb installations”.

In his last budget as chancellor, Jeremy Hunt scrapped the furnished holiday let scheme, which offered benefits such as relief on the cost of equipping properties.

But under a Labour government there will be no let-up. The crackdown is expected to intensify, with plans to introduce a new mandatory national register for short-term lets.

The government could also give local councils across England the power to require planning permission for holiday lets, in a similar but less comprehensive way to the “Article 4 directive” used in Gwynedd.

This could raise concerns, as has happened in Gwynedd, that the measure could have a negative impact on property prices by effectively devaluing residential properties.

This would discourage buyers of second homes from purchasing them, as they cannot be used as holiday lets.