Fed-up members of Keswick Town Council are feeling ignored by planners at the Lake District National Park Authority.
The town council recently quizzed an LDNPA planning chief after the national park gave the green light to a string of applications to turn B&Bs and guesthouses into holiday lets when the town council had urged them to refuse.
Town councillors have grown increasingly concerned this year after hearing first hand about the “social and environmental” impact holiday lets have been having on the town’s quiet residential streets.
The worry is of unsupervised visiting single groups running amok in large properties causing problems for neighbours.
Resident Jean Murray has told The Keswick Reminder that people living in Wordsworth Street had complained to her about the disturbances that go on and that the balance between tourism and residential had tipped.
Cllr Steve Harwood, who heads the town council’s three-member planning group, revealed: “We have asked the national park in a direct question – ‘Is there any point in our objecting if you are going to approve it anyway?’
“Their advice is that they probably won’t change their mind, but the fact that we object means it has to be heard by their committee and if they hear enough of these, they might change their mind.
“They are approving all of these types of applications.”
Cllr Tony Lywood said those who ran B&B businesses in Keswick tended to do so with a partner and sometimes had children.
“There are 68 B&Bs and guesthouses in the back streets area alone and you can probably double or triple that in the rest of Keswick.
“For every one that is lost to a holiday let, that family dwelling also ceases to exist,” he said.
“That family will have to move out and find somewhere else or move away from the area. So you lose two local adults as residents and the children who go to the local school.
“In extremis – if we were to lose all our B&Bs to holiday lets, this policy of the national park means we would lose all those dwelling houses as well.”
However, Cllr Marcus Campbell-Savours said the town council had to be careful that B&B and guesthouse owners were not trapped in properties they could not sell.
Of the recent application to change the use of Hazelmere, on Crosthwaite Road, from a guesthouse to self-catering accommodation, Cllr Campbell-Savours said it had been flooded repeatedly and struggled to sell as a B&B.
He said: “We may find that had some of these properties not been bought by holiday let owners – who perhaps have a different risk appetite to some of our local residents – some people may have been trapped with their property.”
Cllr Harwood said the town council opposed the application due to concerns around off-site management of holiday lets, although it would be approved by the LDNPA.
“There is a lack of clarity on how this change will be managed. Where this is reliant on off-site management we are concerned about the impact.”