Editor

I am appalled by the attitude of Gwynedd Council toward the providers of holiday accommodation in this area.

We have all complied with the requests by the government and closed our businesses. We have had all our bookings cancelled in line with the (quite right) move by the government to restrict movement and to make people stay at home. We are also staying at home!

Other tourism businesses have been paid grants, but they clearly don’t realise that when visitors go to those businesses they have to be accommodated somewhere and they don’t all camp or come in caravans. I live in the village where my business operates.

It has now become apparent that the promised support which our Chancellor of the Exchequer handed down to our local councils to pay out to all businesses in receipt of small business rate relief is being withheld from all accommodation owners in the four Plaid Cymrucontrolled councils.

The Plaid Cymru councillors have a bee in their bonnet about second-home owners. They are tarring all accommodation owners/providers with the same brush as they think we are all trying to get out of paying council tax.

We have to jump through yet more hoops, before this payment will be made to us. I have waited patiently for five weeks, complying with the request on completion of the online form, not to pester with phone calls. So I haven’t. Now five weeks later, I find that I will have a lot longer to wait, to receive something to help me to survive whilst my business is closed, with no income. No prospect of any income probably for the entire year. My business only has planning permission to be a holiday let business. So that is what it is. Overheads on a building, and a business continue regardless of whether it is let out.

If Gwynedd Council has allowed any second-home owners to register their houses as a business, who are not actually functioning as a business, then the fault lies solely with Gwynedd Council and whoever processes their applications. That was the time to be scrutinising whether they are genuine or not. They should monitor them regularly to ensure that it is continuing as a business for the required amount of time. This is not the time, during a pandemic to be withholding relief/support funds, which the Chancellor passed down to councils in good faith that it would be paid to the businesses in question.

I cannot believe that the Plaidrun councils see this global crisis as an opportunity to nit-pick and not to do what has been done elsewhere and to show some value for the businesses, who are usually so proud of our beautiful area, to promote it to guests, to respect the Welsh language, its folklore and to contribute to a large degree to the local economy. I am feeling totally disillusioned and undervalued.

Debbie Ashton, Llwyngwril Gallery Holiday Accommodation

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