Editor

Yet again Plaid Cymru politicians and councillors in Gwynedd are blaming second-home owners for their failure to provide affordable homes in the county, and yet again they choose to ignore the root cause of the problem.

It is not second-home owners supposedly driving up prices, it is the low salaries on offer in the county making obtaining a mortgage impossible. If a full-time employee is only earning £16,000 per annum, he or she is by definition on the minimum wage. If an employee is on the minimum wage he or she will not get a mortgage even on the cheapest of properties. This is why so many young Welsh people have emigrated to England to enhance their job prospects, and they will not return unless the region can attract higher-paid employment opportunities.

We have previously been informed in your Views page that most second-home owners in Gwynedd are local residents, residents of other parts of Wales, or Welsh expatriates working in England. They are therefore not the predominantly English invaders that some Gwynedd councillors would have us believe. In the inland areas of the county a significant number of these second homes were originally derelict and have been restored by the owners using local builders and building suppliers. They contribute significantly to the local economy without being a burden on local health, education or social care services.

I now read in your newspaper that Plaid Cymru, who seem to want us to live in some sort of “socialist republic” where money grows on trees, are demanding that second-home owners go back to England because this will, in their opinion, at a stroke, solve the affordable homes “crisis” within the region. I am at a loss to understand how anyone can be quite so naïve and even more worrying is that they are running the council! If tourists and second-home owners take their business elsewhere there will be even fewer employment opportunities in the county. This will result in the increased emigration to England of young people. So who will then live in these now empty properties? Nobody, they will become derelict!

Readers may well ask on what basis I make these observations? Well many years ago I was one of those “young Welsh people who emigrated to England to find employment”. In my case the British Army.

Years later I returned to Wales and bought a property that had previously been semi-derelict and was renovated by my second home owning predecessors!

John Rees Moss Bala

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