On behalf of Kernow Rydh
The ongoing housing crisis in Cornwall continues to price Cornish people out of their own communities. Studies from academics at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Cornish Studies found that Cornwall faces “an affordability crisis” in housing, amongst a host of “unique economic challenges”.
Cornwall’s economy is characterised by seasonal, part-time and low paid work. 40% of jobs are part-time and over 25% of Cornish residents earn under the real living wage. In the large hospitality sector, 70% of jobs pay less than a real living wage. With added cost of living pressures across the board, working people are now struggling to survive.
In much of Cornwall, housing is entirely unaffordable for the average resident – both to buy and to rent – further threatening communities which are already under strain. In the most unaffordable areas, local buyers face an affordability gap of over £440,000 for the average terraced house. Cornwall’s average house prices are nine times the average salary, and residents identifying as Cornish are less likely to own their own home compared to those that identified as British.
This is exacerbated by the very low number of properties available on the market and the rise of second home ownership. At the time of the Institute’s study in June 2022, there were only 161 properties to rent in the entire of Cornwall, a nation of over 580,000 people. In March 2022, almost 30,000 homes in Cornwall were not lived in full-time while 11,000 waited on council housing lists, showing the scale of the second home problem. These circumstances inevitably create societal issues as Cornish people must move away to find cheaper accommodation and key workers cannot afford to live in the communities they serve.
Current housing policy does not address these structural problems. The UK government seeks to hyper- centralise planning, pushing through more house-building regardless of local community views, without challenging the underlying causes of the crisis. However, we know from experience that enforced speculative development does not create affordable housing - instead, we need a political shift which places normal people above developer profits.
Our party needs the EFAy to tackle this issue because it directly affects the nation we live in as well as the neighboring coastal ones with which we keep good bilateral trade relations.
If a clear position from our European party approves the above motion, the political line of our party will be considerably strengthened and we will eventually count on a higher degree of leverage to maneuver about this issue at the national and state level.
Many areas across Europe face similar problems and minority communities must be given the necessary powers of self-determination to make truly affordable housing a reality. Additionally, minorities must not be cajoled into breaching their territorial integrity in order to receive extra powers, as the UK government has repeatedly attempted to do with Cornwall. A problem of this scale and acuteness cannot be solved from afar, but only by and with the communities affected.
We propose that EFAy: