A ban on second homes will harm Cornwall and Devon’s locals even more

I was in Mousehole earlier this week, the village of holiday cottages and second homes, to swim in the harbour. Even in the 1990s, Mousehole was a place with strange and wonderful things to see. I am not saying tourists are not real people, but they abandon Mousehole when the season is over, leave it hollowed out, and force locals into expensive and insecure rental properties or far away. 

It is ironic that Tom Bawcock is the folk hero of this village: the myth says he went out in a storm to fish so the children wouldn’t starve, and, when the villagers realised he had gone, they stood on the quayside with lamps lit to bring him home. That wouldn’t happen now. The coveted houses on the harbour are dark in winter, because they are holiday cottages and second homes, and Bawcock would have drowned.

When I went for my swim the water was fresh and piercing, but the day was depressing. Who is there to meet in Mousehole except other tourists? No local can afford the prices now: £685,000 for a two-bedroom cottage or £1.1 million for a three-bedroom house, all knowingly – and accurately – marketed at those from out of the duchy. It is absurd, self-defeating and, whatever drivel is spouted about living in the land of your ancestors being a “privilege”, cruel. Mousehole remains beautiful but it is one dimensional, even dull nowadays. But that is the way; the lesson will not be learned. In coveting something for yourself, you only destroy it.

Still, remaining residents of villages fight back; or at least they try. In 2016 St Ives – likewise hollow – banned all new build housing from being designated as second homes with a “principal residence policy”. Now Salcombe in Devon – where 60 per cent of all properties are second homes – follows. Last week the district council agreed unanimously that all new homes must be primary residences in perpetuity.

This is pitiable because it is already too late. The change in St Ives merely pushed house prices up: locals and non-locals bidded against each other for the remnants of the stock, and house builders moved elsewhere for greater profit.

What to do to make Britain keep its sense of place? Everyone has different solutions, and this is mine. It is simple, and obvious, and my fingers tire from typing it: stay in a hotel. Why wouldn’t you? Or go on as you are: rent your holiday cottage or buy your second home. The lights on the quayside will go dark.