YP Letters: Tax rise for Dales homes will not work

THE proposed council tax rises for owners of second homes (The Yorkshire Post, January 26) are doubtless well-intentioned but are unlikely to encourage or facilitate young families to establish themselves within the Yorkshire Dales.

They are more likely to flood the local housing market with properties, the owners of which are unwilling or unable to afford this additional expense.

The resulting fall in house prices risks devaluing the homes of established residents who may find that they are unable to raise capital via equity release or to sell their houses at a price which would enable them to move outside of the park if their circumstances changed.

The purported aim of the tax increases is to enable younger families to get a foot on the local housing ladder and to continue to live within the National Park. In my opinion, the proposals are likely to achieve the opposite. The viability of many local trades and businesses who depend heavily upon second home owners will be jeopardised.

For example, since buying our own property near Hawes 15 years ago, we have spent well over £150,000 on restoration and development work including the complete renovation of a derelict barn on our property, many metres of stone walling, extensive roof repairs and sympathetic interior work. With the exception of one individual, all of this work has been undertaken by local tradesmen with young families.

How better to ensure the future prosperity of Dales communities than by encouraging inward investment from the Northern cities and industrial centres from individuals who feel a tremendous affinity and affection for the Dales, and are willing to spend generously to restore neglected infrastructure?

The barn to which I refer had been neglected for many years and was in a ruinous state when we bought it.

How was this contributing to the local economy and how was it helping to ease the shortage of affordable housing?

Had we not bought and restored it when we did, it would now be beyond repair.

If the proposed changes in council tax go ahead, then second home ownership within the Dales would become a preserve of the very wealthy. As a result, the existing relationships between locals and holiday home owners may become strained and fragmented. Clumsy forms of social engineering rarely have the desired effects.

The proposals are iniquitous because they will affect only a small proportion of second homeowners within the UK. Why, for example, should second homeowners within the Yorkshire Dales National Park be penalised whereas those in the Lake District escape largely unscathed ?

I would urge councillors to consider these issues when making their decisions.

Fleeced by the Chinese

From: John Knox, Harrogate.

SADLY, after a lifetime working in the textile industry, I can confirm that what Mark Johnson said in a recent article about the domestic textile industry is in the main true.

As stated, British wool is shorn from sheep at a nominal break-even price to the farmer, scoured and then exported to China.

However, what it does not say in the article, and is my understanding, is that the British farmer, on whose land the wool is grown, gains his income from the EU grant per acre farmed.

Some of this wool is used domestically in China for putting carpets into five star hotels, but it is reasonable to assume that some of the wool finds its way into yarn, fabric or knitted goods which are then exported in some cases back to Britain. Hence, indirectly, hastening the demise of those sections of our UK industry.

Years ago the company I was working with was importing silk from China and the type of silk which you were sourcing depended on what stage of manufacture it had reached.

The best rate of exchange was for fully processed silk into fabric, the second best into 
semi-processed silk (i.e. yarn) 
and the worst left as raw silk, thereby rendering the Chinese domestic industry more competitive.

As we will be free from the shackles of Europe (which imposes duty on Chinese imports) should not Britain introduce a system like the Chinese to foster domestic production?

Surely, is not sauce for the Chinese goose also sauce for the UK gander?

May’s hollow police victory

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

THERE are three reasons why crime, and particularly knife crime, has risen and I’m sorry to say that the first is our current Prime Minister (The Yorkshire Post, January 26).

Those of us who choose to remember will recall how Theresa May, as Home Secretary, boasted that she had taken on the mighty Police Federation 
and won.

No Mrs May, you took on the general public and bullied them into giving up what they had enjoyed for so many years – their safety and security – by your ill-considered actions in depleting the police numbers.

Only losers have problem

From: Terry Thomas, Grosvenor Park Gardens, Leeds.

WITH regard to ‘problem gamblers’ (‘Gambling clinic plan for region’, The Yorkshire Post, January 25), I can’t help feeling that if these gamblers were constantly winning – rather than losing and accruing debts – I’m sure this ‘problem’ would diminish and it would no longer be considered an illness that the NHS has to get involved with.

At present the odds are so in favour of the gambling industry that it only produces losers. Surely that is the root of the problem?