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A backlash against out-of-towners buying second homes in a British beauty spot has sparked proposals to ban anymore being built.
Almost a dozen villages in the Yorkshire Dales are earmarked for planning regulations that would stop new builds that would not be permanently occupied.
Drafted by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA), the plans would only allow homes to be built if they would be used as a main residency.
In a report published this month by the YDNPA it said the ban would ‘maximise the use of new housing and avoid loss to the holiday market’.
It adds: ‘All new planning permissions will be restricted to principal occupancy only to ensure that new homes are targeted at households that are going to live in the Park and will not simply feed demand for more second homes or holiday letting.’
If the proposals were approved, the ban would apply to 11 villages across the Yorkshire Dales, a popular destinations that attracts more than six million visitors per year, contributing £485million to the local economy.
It comes after North Yorkshire County Council doubled council tax for second home owners in April.
Richard Foster, a local Conservative councillor and member of the YDNPA, said: ‘These policies seek to support farm businesses, and cover housing, the rural economy, traditional buildings, landscape and wildlife, amongst other things.’
Almost a dozen villages in the Yorkshire Dales are earmarked for planning regulations that would stop new builds that would not be permanently occupied
Richard Foster, a local Conservative councillor and member of the YDNPA, said: ‘A lot of the existing housing stock has already disappeared’
He told the Telegraph: ‘We’re very popular with the tourists and a lot of the existing housing stock has already disappeared, especially smaller housing that tends to be turned into holiday cottages.’
‘We have ended up with a real reduction in the houses that we’ve got which people can live in.
‘We are just proposing this on the new houses. We want to build homes because we don’t have the staff to cater to the tourists when they do come and some of the pubs can’t cater to the tourists.’
He added that existing properties will still be able to be used as second holiday homes.
Members of the YDNPA will meet next week to vote on the proposals before a public consolation is completed early next year.
Last year North Yorkshire Dales County Council raised council taxes by 100pc on second home owners.
It come following the previous Conservative government changing the law allowing stricter penalties on ’empty homes’ saying that houses that are ‘substantially furnished’ but with no ‘one resident’ fall within this classification.
The law allows local authorities to impose additional taxes after a property qualifies for one year, instead of two years as it was previously.
The latest available figures for second homes in the Yorkshire Dales reveal that around one in 10 houses is a second home.
