Similar rumblings are to be heard in other resorts round the country – and these places by and large are resorts, with a local economy that would be moribund were it not for the influx of money from tourism.
Should there be restrictions on second-home ownership? That is a vexed question and one which sooner or later will be aired in Langham. It raises other questions about the infrastructure of modern Britain and the sort of society ours has become.
Why would someone want a second home? The obvious reason is that the second home is in a more attractive place than the principal home. A hope of capital appreciation may also be involved, given the headline level of inflation and the generally dismal performance of investments elsewhere in the economy, though of course capital gains tax is charged on the sale of second homes.
The principal home is likely to be in a town or city where money can be made, particularly London. The environmental degradation of British towns and cities has been accelerating for the past hundred years at least, the chief reason, latterly, being overcrowding caused by mass immigration. In our piece about house prices in Langham, we mentioned demographic change as one of the key drivers of house-price inflation, and this subsumes the phenomenon of second-home ownership.
As soon as they can – typically when they retire – a hefty proportion of urbanites sell up and move to some more congenial spot. They can hardly be blamed for this: during their working lives urban dwellers contribute the bulk of taxes paid in Britain, taxes which are used to subsidise services for country dwellers. It would be monstrous to pass legislation forcing people who have lived and worked in a degraded urban environment to grow old and die in it.
A second-home owner is in effect a part-time retiree. He escapes from the city whenever he can, to breathe clean air and live for a few days or weeks in a place devoid of ULEZ cameras and the roar of traffic. He may plan to retire to his second home when he gets the chance.
A hundred and fifty years ago the bulk of the working population in Langham was employed on the land. Now all but a tiny minority of farm workers have been replaced with machines. After the Industrial Revolution, redundant farm labourers migrated to the cities and jobs in the new factories. The cottages they had occupied fell vacant, to be gradually taken up by such people as artists (who can live more or less anywhere), retirees and, yes, second-home owners escaping from the environs of those ‘dark Satanic mills’.
The demand, particularly from retirees, was such that in the 1970s the south-eastern corner of Langham was developed (The Cornfield and adjoining properties), followed closely by the St Mary’s estate in the north-western. These houses were not built in response to a boom in the local economy, however many of them might be occupied today by people who work here.
Let us assume that second-home ownership in Langham is capable of being banned or otherwise penalised (it isn’t, as we shall see presently). The idea is to reduce local house-prices so that young people who wish to live here may do so, a laudable enough aspiration which, however, raises a hornets’ nest of political issues.
In the first place, what right do others have to tell someone how he may spend his money – money that has probably been worked very hard for and taxed over and over again? Especially when those others already enjoy the privilege of living in the pleasant surroundings where the would-be second-homer wants to buy.
Well, the government forbids us to spend our money on handguns or hard drugs because these things are judged harmful. It is harmful to compel young people to live far away from their families. But then why should impecunious people be entitled to a luxury denied to those who can afford to pay for it? Here we are skirting close to the sort of legislation brought in by the Bolsheviks, who, if they deemed it overlarge, made you share your house or flat with strangers.
Britain is a socialist country: today’s ‘conservative’ government is far further to the left than Harold Wilson’s in 1964. It may indeed come about that it mandates who may or may not live in a particular house, but we have not got there yet. Legislation restricting second-home ownership, however, might help pave the way to it. We should be careful what we wish for.
A second-home owner is wealthier than the average citizen. He can afford not only the price of the property but the costs of maintaining it and of getting there and back. Envy surely plays a part in the resentment behind these calls to action. The resentment is compounded by the fact that the second-homer often brings with him a car-load of groceries and takes his laundry back to the city to get it cleaned.
Which brings us to the impact of second homes and holiday lets on the local economy. If all these properties were occupied by local people, where would they work? Would they not have to commute to Fakenham or even further afield? Without the effects of tourism, about a fifth of the jobs in north Norfolk would go. And if these local people could not commute, or were otherwise unable to work, how could they afford to pay the level of council tax now imposed? They couldn’t. NNDC would likely go into deficit and services would be cut. And if these people couldn’t find work, they would be on benefits, leading perhaps to the downward spiral of lifelong dependence on the state.
We mustn’t forget that tourism brings a great deal of money into north Norfolk, over half a billion in 2019. A fair amount of this is spent in one way or another by second-homers. As a result we have a plethora of nice pubs, cafés and restaurants to visit year-round, as well as such facilities as the Cley Marshes Visitor Centre and the extraordinary provision of shops in Holt. We also have an array of local tradesmen to choose from.
As to the efforts of such parish councils as those at Blakeney or Burnham Market to restrict second-home ownership, we mustn’t be too hard on their naivety. They are doomed for the simple reason that it is up to the owner of two properties to declare which is his primary and which his secondary residence. If council tax on second homes is charged at the standard rate in the city, and at double or even triple the rate in Burnham Market, which property do you think will be declared as which? As the Right Honourable Ed Balls and his wife, the equally honourable Yvette Cooper, taught us in their ‘house-flipping’ episode, re-designation of one’s primary residence is easy.
The only answer to such problems as are caused by second-home ownership is to make the principal place of residence so attractive that nobody wants a second home. That is plainly not going to happen.
As with everything, there are pros and cons. Pro: year-round residents enjoy better facilities (and incidentally inflated house-prices); con: local workers, especially the young, are unable to live where they choose. That may be hard, but then so is life.
Second homes that are used, visited regularly by their owners, are not the worst aspect of this difficult problem. If they come to them, say, one or two weekends a month and for a chunk of the spring and summer months, they help the local economy and keep the villages alive in all sorts of ways. If they are let for holidays they help the local economy too. We have lived in Langham a little over a year. When we arrived we assumed that the dozen or so houses behind us would be fully let & occupied through the holiday months. But they have remained dark and empty, with none let at all, so far as we can tell. This helps nobody and brings nothing to the village or the wider area, and houses left empty for long periods quickly deteriorate. I am not one to plead for yet more state interference in our lives but this is surely a situation that, if it continues, will require intervention from local and / or national government. The waiting list in North Norfolk for hard working and deserving families to be given council houses is very long. It is surely wrong for any homes to remain empty for years when this is the case.
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