Holiday homes in Yorkshire: Council vows to collect more money from second-home owners

A Ryedale District Council report states while ordinary householders contribute towards the cost of waste collections and disposal by paying council tax and businesses pay for waste collections, the authority expects to raise some £94,000 extra this year from holiday let owners, some of whom have not been paying anything to have rubbish and recycling taken away.

The officer’s report to a meeting of Ryedale’s policy and resources committee on Thursday states after councillors highlighted concerns in June, the authority found of the 553 holiday lets in the district, only 255 or 46 per cent had a contract for their waste collection with the council.

The report states: “It is essential that the council has robust procedures in place to ensure it is meeting its statutory duties for domestic waste collections and is only providing commercial waste collections to businesses who have a contract with the council.

“Due to the waste that is generated by a holiday let being very similar to the waste generated by a residential domestic dwelling, the standard domestic waste collection service is provided to holiday lets who have a commercial waste contract with the council.”

Councillors will hear during the Covid pandemic there was a 37 per cent increase in the number of properties in Ryedale, some 189, that changed from a being classed as a domestic property to a business, meaning they no longer had to pay council tax.

The spike has been attributed to rising demand for stay at home holidays, the rise of AirBnB accommodation and the business grant scheme. The report states a loophole that allows second homeowners to evade both business rates and council tax on a furnished holiday let property will close when new legislation becomes effective from April 1. The government is currently calling for evidence to establish a registration scheme for holiday lets as part of its levelling up agenda given the significant increase in holiday lets during Covid.

Alongside this, councillors believe North Yorkshire County Council’s move to double council tax charges for second homes across the county could lead more property owners to have them classified as holiday lets.

However, Ryedale council said it had already implemented a clampdown over the issue, sending all new business-rated holiday let properties details explaining their waste responsibilities, while enabling their waste collection teams to identify and report suspicious properties.

The meeting will see councillors asked to confirm a flat waste collection rate charge for holiday lets from April to help “raise awareness and improve the promotion of the council’s commercial waste collection service to holiday let owners”. Funding from the holiday let charges will partly be used to ensure the council has “an ongoing robust enforcement capacity” to check the system is not abused.