Yorkshire at risk of sleep walking towards a network of ghost villages and communities due to second homes - Andrew Brown

So, it is little surprise that people want to visit our area and provide a boost to our economy by staying in our hotels, eating in our restaurants, and paying entry fees to help maintain our cultural attractions.

Unfortunately, there comes a point when their desire to visit starts to impact on the ability of local people to remain local. Second homes and airbnb properties are starting to blight many of our most popular locations and we need to take account of what has already happened in other parts of the country that are popular tourist destinations before it is too late.

There are villages in Devon and Cornwall where 40% of all properties are second homes. Any home that comes on the market is rapidly snapped up and rented out for short term holiday lettings or used on occasional weekends by people who earn salaries that few locals can ever aspire to. It has become virtually impossible for anyone relying on a local salary to buy or rent a local home.

Yorkshire is at severe risk of sleep walking towards its own network of ghost villages and communities.

Any reasonable person might expect that the taxation and rating system would be used to discourage this trend and yet there are still circumstances in which someone who owns a second home can receive a discount on their rates because they are paying their council tax somewhere else.

What is needed is very much the opposite. In areas that are vulnerable to being hollowed out of permanent residents there is a strong case for raising the council tax on anyone who owns a second home or rents a property out using short term online letting companies.

This solution is, however, far from being as simple as it sounds. It takes genuine skill to design a local property tax in such a way that it hits rarely used second homes but doesn’t hit useful local tourism businesses.

On top of this there is the significant problem that many second homes just aren’t suitable for local families wanting access to schools and public transport. They are often in out of the way locations with spectacular views rather than just around the corner from the local facilities like doctors’ surgeries and shops that those who live her all year depend on.

All of which means that a more radical solution needs to be taken seriously. Council housing.

The time has come to admit that sometimes the only way to make sure there is a reliable supply of good quality housing at prices that local people can afford is for the local council or a local housing association to build them and make them available at reasonable rents.

Current policy tends to rely on the hope that private developers can be required to provide a number of “affordable” houses when they build larger developments. Unfortunately, it is rare for those houses to be genuinely affordable by someone on an average local salary. It is also very rare for coastal areas or for Dales valleys to be an appropriate place for a large housing estate. Progress has therefore been creepingly slow.

What is needed is for the few small sites that are available, sometimes on land that councils themselves own, to be used to build properties that remain in community ownership and are rented out at reasonable rates.

That can only happen if councils and housing associations are allowed to borrow to build or purchase and renovate secure in their ownership of those properties. No responsible council or charity can take out a mortgage on a home needed by the local community if it faces having them sold off on the cheap under Right to Buy legislation.

Sometimes a policy that was once popular and helpful to a lot of individuals runs beyond its useful life. There is a lot to be said for allowing a tenant on a huge council estate to buy their own home at a fair price. There is, however, little point in leaving outdated national policies in place when they start to prevent local councils from actively meeting local housing need. Discounted Right to Buy has become a seriously harmful policy.

As it happens central government does indeed have plans to act on policies that allow community owned housing to be bought by the tenant and not replaced. They are planning to force housing associations also to sell off their properties on the cheap.

It may well be some time before ordinary working people in tourist destinations get the affordable housing that they need.

Andrew Brown is a Craven District councillor representing Aire Valley with Lothersdale and the North Yorkshire councillor for Aire Valley.