Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 18 July 2018.
Some months ago, I had an opportunity to question you on the Government’s attempt to tackle the increasing pattern of the owners of second homes registering their properties as holiday lets in order to avoid paying council tax. As they are small businesses, they qualify for business rate relief in accordance with the Government’s business rate relief scheme. You said at that time that you would work with local authorities and the valuation office in order to gather data and to monitor this. Could we have an update on this to see what that data has demonstrated to date? Given that there is a substantial increase in the number of second homes in Gwynedd, for example, unless these processes are sufficiently robust, then we have to be proactive in order to ensure that the ratepayer doesn’t lose out.