On a dripping day in Keswick with rain falling from his hood, it’s fitting that Colin Thorns, a Keswick Community Housing Trust member, should use a watery analogy to try to explain how difficult it is building new homes for local working people.
He is showing The Keswick Reminder around Southey Court, at the rear of the Methodist Church.
The trust’s four-property housing development was unveiled in July.
It consists of three, three-bed homes and one two-bed property — all for local rent.
It was made possible with the generosity of the church which agreed to hand over a prime piece of land for a good local cause.
Colin and the trust are justifiably proud of Southey Court — the feedback from tenants has been “very positive” — but they wished they could deliver more schemes like this.
Manned entirely by volunteers, the trust was set up more than a decade ago to try and replace properties lost to the second home and holiday let industry.
What was a huge ask in 2010 looks increasingly like an impossible task today, particularly with the spectacular rise of Airbnb.
Or as Colin succinctly puts it: “We’re just trying to stem a breach in the dam with a sandbag.”
There have been successes in that time with the trust delivering more than 40 new homes for local people for rent or part-ownership.
But since the 2017-2020 boom in holiday lets and second homes, it estimates it has only replaced 10 per cent of those lost, with house prices increasingly beyond locals.
He said: “Of the four developments the trust have done — two have been on land donated by the churches. Banks Court was a former toilet block bought from Allerdale Borough Council for just £1 and converted into four one-bed apartments and Calvert Way was a private development of which the trust bought 22 properties and Impact Housing also bought 22.”
Colin now leads a sub-group on the trust called the Lobby.
It plans to spearhead the campaign for change and raise awareness of the problem at the highest levels.
The trust believes the surge in second homes and holiday lets will only be controlled when steps are taken to fulfil an understandable demand by people to have a place in Keswick or run a business from it.
What the trust wants to avoid is the trend of residential houses going down like dominoes.
He said some of the properties now becoming holiday lets were once former social housing – sold at huge discounts to past tenants because of the restrictive local occupancy condition – and then sold on.
Some of those are now ending up in the hands of new owners looking for an income from a buzzing tourism hotspot — even if it means turning a blind eye to the occupancy rule.
“Because there are people out there willing to take that risk, they are helping to drive property prices here up and up,” said Colin.
“We intend to discuss this, and other ways to take the pressure off local housing, with the LDNPA in the coming months.”
