‘It’s a glorified holiday camp’: St Ives fights losing battle over second homes
“Holiday let, holiday let, holiday let,” says Leo Walker ruefully, as he leads the way through the historic fishing quarter of St Ives in Cornwall, pointing to successive properties.
As the afternoon sunshine breaks through the clouds and gaggles of tourists devour ice-creams at the nearby harbour beach, Walker is reminiscing about how this area – known locally as “downlong” – was once affordable for young renters and was populated with traditional B&Bs.
“I used to pay £25 a week to live here, but those prices are long gone,” he says. “Housing poverty here is not a new thing. Something should have been done about it 20 years ago.”
In 2016, residents in St Ives voted to take action against the scourge of second home ownership. By inserting a “principal residence” condition into the sale of new-build properties, a mechanism known as Policy H2, the St Ives Area Neighbourhood Development Plan hoped to curb the influx of investment buyers, while providing better and more sustainable housing prospects for locals.
Residents of Whitby in Yorkshire recently voted in favour of similar action. But the people of St Ives have a warning for them: such action may not be “bold enough”.
Morag Robertson, chair of St Ives Community Land Trust, says: “The policy was designed to temper the feverishness at the edges of the market and to ensure open land was used for housing for local people, not for speculative investments or holiday lets. We think that’s been a success, but we should’ve gone further.
“The town has been sucked out by holiday lets in the last couple of years because H2 doesn’t stop existing properties from being turned into holiday lets. We’ve also faced issues such as no-fault evictions [long-term renters have been forced to leave
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