Editor

Your article ‘Deadline approaches to have a say on second home council tax hike’ states that the cut-off date is 1 February for comments on Gwynedd Council’s proposal to increase the premium on second properties.

I advise Gwynedd residents,including second property owners, to read the report to Cabinet dated 15 December.

In this report, the data indicates that there are 6,685 second homes in Gwynedd. Of these,4,718 currently pay council tax at the premium rate of 150 per cent.Since 2015, the remaining 1,967 properties have transferred to business rates and therefore pay zero council tax. The council tax taken from these 4,718 properties, including the premium, is now only 5.9 per cent higher than the council tax taken from the 6,685 properties paying standard council tax in 2015.

If a further 300 self-catering or holiday-home properties transfer to business rates the council tax take will go into “negative equity”. I suggest this will occur by mid 2021 at the latest, and increase dramatically if the council imposes a further 50 per cent premium. All council tax payers in Gwynedd will have to foot the bill for this foolhardy scheme.

This situation was entirely predictable and a small number of councillors had previously flagged this up. The answer to affordable housing in Gwynedd is to build council houses. It is unethical and counter-productive to now heap more cost on genuine second-home owners to bail-out poor decision-making by the council.

My suggestion is that the council rescinds the council tax premium completely on second homes from 2022. In the meantime, the council lobbies the Welsh Government to change the criteria for business rate classification to only those properties that are exclusively used for self-catering and only occupied by the owner of the property for, say, up to 20 days per annum. It is also time that owners of the thousands of static caravans in Gwynedd pay council tax as they use the same facilities as everyone else.

Second-home owners have no issue with paying standard council tax, even though the Local Government Finance Act 1992provides Gwynedd Council with the discretion to allow a discount of 50 per cent, as is the case in England. They do however believe it morally wrong to blame them for the lack of affordable homes when the root-causes are low wages, a lack of employment opportunities and no new council houses.

John Rees Moss Bala

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