The explosion of holiday homes in rural Britain has led to some communities being in danger of becoming winter ghost towns. At least this is the conclusion of ministers looking at plans on how to tackle this growing problem. The plans being considered aim to reduce the numbers of properties being sold to holidaymakers as second homes and encourage a steady supply for local people.
Home owners in some of Britain's beauty spots will have to apply for planning permission should they want to sell them to holiday home buyers. The change will be mainly applied to places where the second home ownership reaches 40-50%, transforming them into ghost towns in the off-peak season.

Holiday home owners will also face extra taxes to help pay for public services and social housing. Sir Michael Lyons was left in charge of finding the right mechanism for applying this new taxes. One option is the introduction of an absenteeism tax on the length of time a house is unoccupied and the household is not contributing to the local economy.

The Goverment needs to find new ways of identifying second homes or holiday homes. According to official data, there are only 100,000 second homes in England. However, consumer surveys reveal the real number being around 300,000.
One possibility here would be to extract information from the self-certification process for income tax, in addition to perhaps fining people for providing false information.

As said, the full problem is not shown in big cities like London, where second home ownership is not a problem, but in places such as Cornwall and the Lake District where any dead period can be catastrophic for the local economy. Holiday homes owners are not sending their kids to local schools, they are not buying in local shops, not using local services which raises the probability of these services disappearing slowly. This is a serious problem for local people.

Measures to restrict sales of new houses to local people are already to be introduced in parts of the Highlands. Similar measures are already in place in the Brecon Beacons, Dartmoor, Snowdonia, Exmoor, the North Yorkshire Moors, the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District. Times Online reveals that the cost of a rural home is now £200,000, 19 per cent more than an urban property. It also compiles a list of most popular second home places in England. Below you can see the percentage of second homes in these areas.

City of London: 27.2%
Isles of Scilly: 21.5%
South Hams, Devon: 10.9%
North Norfolk: 10.0%
North Cornwall: 9.9%
Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland: 9.5%
Westminster: 9.1%
Kensington & Chelsea: 8.7%
Penwith, Cornwall: 8.6%
South Lakeland, Cumbria: 7.6%