9. What assessment has been made of the impact that a predominance of second homes is having on areas of housing need in Mid and West Wales, particularly in coastal towns? OAQ54660

Yes, I accept that some Welsh coastal towns can have extremely high house prices, with people struggling to get on the property ladder in their own community. I'm keen to see Welsh Government support like homebuy benefit these people. And our new Self Build Wales can also offer help when it launches shortly.

I'm grateful to the Minister for her answer. In her answer to the previous question, she made reference to the council tax premiums that now can be charged, but I'm sure that she's aware that there is, of course, a loophole allowing individuals to register second homes as businesses and then renting them out for a minimum number of days a year. By doing this, they can of course avoid those council tax premiums and, in fact, may become liable for small business rate relief—in that case, contributing nothing.

We know that there's an estimate that 1,000 of the 5,000 second homes in Gwynedd alone have been taking advantage of this loophole. Has the Welsh Government made any assessment of what the picture of this is across the mid and west region, what kind of impact that may be having, and how that may be exacerbating the impact of second-home ownership on those coastal communities I referred to in my original question?

Yes, I think that my colleague Rebecca Evans answered this fairly comprehensively in a debate fairly recently. What I would say is if they're—I have said to all of the local authorities across Wales that, if they have evidence that this is causing them a problem, they should bring it forward. I said it at the WLGA executive committee, and I had individual meetings with various local authorities in north Wales around the evidence that they could bring forward. If that evidence exists, we're very happy to look at it. At the moment, we don't have the evidence that that switch is happening to the detriment of local tax raising, but, if there is evidence, we are very happy to look at it.

Thank you very much, Minister.