Inside UK’s seaside ‘theme park’ that’s left residents ‘unable to live there’ due to swarms of tourists
FED-UP residents of one of the UK’s most-loved seaside spots say they are being priced out of their own town and feel like they’re “operatives in a theme park”.
St Ives – the tourist capital of Cornwall – has been popular with holidaymakers for decades, but with the pandemic boosting the staycation buzz, locals say things have got “out of hand”.
Money-grabbing developers are snapping up land while the little housing stock there is left is being drained to make way for holiday lets and second homes.
The sun-drenched town relies on tourism to such an extent it’s become an unmanageable addiction – having the second-highest visitor-related spending in the UK.
Tourists spend a whopping £85million per year in St Ives as they lust over its sandy beaches and turquoise waters – with around 540,000 day trippers and more than 220,000 visitors staying in the town every year.
With the small streets rammed and finding a parking space an art form in its own right, the tourism industry accounts for around 2,800 jobs in the area.
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That’s almost one in four people who live there, reports CornwallLive.
Stefan Harkon, an RNLI lifeguard in St Ives, says he fears young people will be driven out of the area in search for better job prospects elsewhere.
“At times, people in the town feel that they are just operatives in a theme park,” he said.
“We work in an area but we can’t live in it. We need quality jobs and more affordable housing.
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“We need to invest in our young people and their future in whatever way we can.
“They need to have a sense of ownership of their town for if they don’t feel that the community where they live appreciates them, we’ll only see a continuation of this loop we’re in and the brain-drain will continue.”
Those who call St Ives home, often on low incomes, live at the top of the hill – away from where the wealthy holidaymakers stay in their second homes for often less than six weeks of the year.
“We have a town where the rich people come to on holiday, when in some part of St Ives more than a third of children live below the bread line,” Camilla Dixon, the co-founder of the First Not Second Homes campaign group, said.
“It is having a detrimental effect. We depleted our social housing stock when they were sold in the 80s.
“Because the value of land has gone up, developers have been land-grabbing and land banking to make more money. It means genuine social housing development are being priced out.”
Camilla says the issue came to a head during the pandemic as sun-starved Brits rushed to book holidays in the UK as international travel screeched to a halt.
‘OUT OF HAND’
“It became even more obvious during the pandemic when it all got out of hand,” she added.
“Now everyone’s building extensions, converting lofts and every square metre they can to turn it all into holiday lets. The appeal to make money that way is just far too tempting.”
As there is little new land available and nowhere to buy, it has also resulted in rental prices going up – or worse – in families being evicted by landlords wanting to cash in on holidaymakers instead.
The First Not Second Homes group want the loophole on second homes not paying council tax or business rate to “be closed and a tourism tax brought in on second homes” so locals have a fair chance at buying houses in their own town.
Camilla’s fellow campaigner Jo Howard said: “Right now it feels like a pressure cooker that came to the boil with Covid and the G7 Summit.
“People are telling us they’re being evicted from their homes to make way for Airbnbs.”
The issue of second homes in St Ives is so acute that in 2016 residents voted to ban new-build housing from being second-homes, with 83 per cent in favour.
According to Rightmove, average house prices in the town are now at £440,000 – more than 17 times the median annual earnings of someone in Cornwall.
Houses for sale in the town, especially those on the harbourside, regularly appear for sale with price tags ranging up to £700,000 or £1m.
St Ives also faces a shortage of rentals; in 2021, while there were more than 1,000 properties in the town available for short-term holiday let, there was only one long-term house available to rent.
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But despite its £1m homes overlooking the harbour or Porthmeor Beach, St Ives sadly boasts some of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cornwall.
Some 36 per cent of children living on the Penbeagle estate live in poverty. That’s 92 children out of the 255 living there.
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