MP’s ‘English invasion’ warning

Mar 9 2008 by Matt Withers, Wales On Sunday

AN MP has warned that hordes of English second home-buyers could soon be “massing on the border”.

Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price made the forecast in response to plans to curb second home-buying in England.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has ordered an inquiry in England aimed at tackling the rising number of people who buy houses in rural areas for purely weekend use.

Buyers could find in future that they are caught in red tape, being forced to apply for planning permission for a change in use.

But the new rules, if introduced, would not apply to Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government says it has no plans to bring in a similar policy.

Now Mr Price says he fears second home-seekers who are not keen to go through the process may opt to buy in Wales instead, where the number of holiday homes is already pricing many first-time buyers out of the market.

“There could be a knock-on effect with second home housing refugees massing at the border, deprived of their inalienable right to have a weekend home in the Cotswolds or the Lake District, seeking recompense in Wales,” the Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP warned.

“That would be a worry for us because it adds further pressure to the rural housing market in Wales.”

Coincidentally, the proposal comes at the same time as a cut in capital gains tax on second homes was announced, which campaigners have warned will lead to more people seeking holiday homes.

The Assembly Housing Minister, Jocelyn Davies, has written to Westminster officials urging them not to go ahead with the cut.

Mr Price said: “The Westminster Government seems to be slightly at odds with itself.

“It doesn’t seem to be joined-up thinking.”

The tax cut, he claimed, would “add more pain for first-time buyers in rural areas trying to get on the first rung of the property ladder”.

A spokesman for the Assembly Government said: “This inquiry is England only. If they did want to introduce it in England, it would not happen in Wales.

“Wales would have to do its own version and there is no plan for that.

“Wales has looked at it in the past, but it rejected it and there is nothing in the pipeline.”

A spokesman for the Westminster Department for Communities and Local Government confirmed they would not be looking at Wales.

But Mr Price said he hoped Ms Davies, a Plaid minister, would re-examine the policy.

He said: “I would have thought that my party at least would be very, very supportive of this.

“I would imagine the decision will need to be looked at again.

“If anything, we need to be going further and faster than the Westminster Government because it’s a bigger problem for us, relatively, in Wales than it is in England.”

Mr Price suggested that authorities in Wales may have been worried such a move here may have looked anti-English and made them “more cautious, whereas in England that sort of thing doesn’t apply because it is English people creating a protected housing market for other English people”.

matt.withers@mediawales.co.uk