Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 3:00 pm on 29 January 2020.
Minister, I remember Dafydd Wigley raising this issue in the first Assembly and talking about where they do have controlled housing markets, like the Channel Islands—that bastion of socialism in the English channel. The thing is, we do have a culture more widely in Britain of free market and second-home ownership, which I respect, but a lot of those people are also tempted sometimes to buy in Spain, in Italy, in France, where there's profound rural depopulation and villages lie empty, often. And it's a slightly different situation, to put it mildly, that we are facing, and we need a range of strategies: higher council tax where there is high housing need but second homes are being purchased; empty home strategies; and modest but necessary building up of villages. Now, it's one thing to have a pretty, pretty village, but it's not very pretty for the local young people if they cannot afford to live there and raise families. So, appropriate development, just like our ancestors have done for generations, should be required.