Beautiful UK national park to ban second homes and holiday lets

A national park’s authority wants to stop all new housing from being used as second homes or holiday lets.

Eleven villages in the Yorkshire Dales could see planning rules introduced which would effectively stop new builds which don’t meet a principal occupancy condition.

Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) members will meet this week to mull draft planning policies aimed at guiding future development at the beauty spot for the next 15 years.

The proposed second-home ban affects 23 sites inside the park with 366 planned new dwellings impacted, according to residential agents publication, The Negotiator.

YDNPA describes the occupancy condition as an “important” new policy which is designed to make sure all new housing is lived in permanently.

Richard Foster, a Conservative councillor who is a member of the YDNPA, said the Dales are very popular with tourists and much of the existing housing stock has disappeared already, especially smaller homes turned into holiday cottages.

Owners of existing properties would still be able to turn them into holiday homes, but new houses would be reserved for families and people who want to live and work in the Dales.

He told the Telegraph: “We’ve got a shortage of people living in the Yorkshire Dales and we are hoping this will help with that. We are not saying it’s a solution – we just hope it helps.”

Parts of upland England, including the Yorkshire Dales, have seen their populations remain static or decline in the past 20 years, according to YDNPA’s draft local plan.

A declining population puts pressure on services and makes the National Park “vulnerable” to services such as GP surgeries and schools closing, shrinking or relocating.

Projections indicate that without action the population of the National Park will remain static or even possibly decline further by 2040, the report notes.

The Dales’ working age population is expected to fall while those aged 65 and over will increase by almost a third by the same year hence the need for action on housing.

North Yorkshire Council is due to double council tax bills for second home owners from April in a bid to tackle a “critical” lack of “affordable” homes.

It was one of the first local authorities to announced a council tax hike on second homes after the last government introduced measures to clamp down on empty dwellings.

The aim of the increase is to return second homes to local use after people were priced out of the housing market in some of the region’s most desirable spots.