By Neil Alexander Wilkinson
Featured image shows rural cottage in Scotland. Credit Russ Daley on Unsplash.com
I have been the island’s housing officer since 2010. In November, I will retire, and so now is a good time to give my thoughts on the island’s housing situation and suggest some measures to improve the dire situation.
Housing on Arran is becoming less and less affordable. House prices and the few private rents are similar to those in Edinburgh, but wages are not. Adverts for new privately rented houses have almost disappeared. There is also far less social housing here than in the country as a whole. The extent of housing need, including homelessness, is hidden in official statistics. As well as causing stress and distress to many residents, the housing crisis is a break on the island’s whole economy, and imperils delivery of NHS and social care services. The free market has failed us. Yet North Ayrshire Council holds many of the levers that can improve the situation, and the Scottish Government holds others.
According to Prime Location, house prices on Arran average at £264k. That’s more than eight times the annual starting salary of a nurse or teacher, and more than eleven years’ wages for the very many people on the national living wage. Young people just cannot compete with people buying houses as second homes or as holiday lets.
When my family came to Arran in 2011, we rented a well maintained house privately, at a not unreasonable rent. At that time, there were many private houses to rent, though a good proportion were in poor condition. Since then, holiday accommodation websites have made it easy for landlords to let their houses to holiday makers, where far more money can be made. This has accelerated since the pandemic. Over a quarter of houses are now holiday homes. In some villages, it’s far more, and they feel like ghost towns in the winter.
Social housing, which gives people the security and dignity of knowing that they can live as long as they want in their home, is also in very short supply. In Scotland, 23% of all households are housing associations or council tenants. In North Ayrshire, that’s 27%. And on Arran, it’s under 15%. One of the major constraints on social housing is the cost of land to build on. We should be able to compulsorily buy land for social housing at existing use value. Today, planning permission turns low-value land into very valuable building land. It is entirely wrong that public policy decisions on planning make random landowners millionaires. If we build social housing on what is now agricultural land, the farmer should get a fair price, plus a small premium, for that land, but no more.
Clearly, tourism is essential to the island’s economy, and that requires accommodation for tourists. But equally, we need affordable homes for the people who live and work here. There will always be a tension here, and there is always a balance to be struck, but that balance has gone too far towards holiday homes. As the island’s housing officer, I get many calls from people offered work at the high school, or hospital, or in hospitality, who cannot find a place to live. I can only give
advice, not offer them a home. Lack of housing is limiting the economy as a whole, very much including tourism, but also the essential services that our children and the elderly population on the island need.
On Arran, there are many people in long-term, grinding poverty and many people who are well off, and everything in between. What is unusual here is that people of all incomes live together in very close proximity. This means that, despite widespread poverty, no area of the island scores highly in the Scottish government’s ‘index of multiple deprivation’. It follows that the extent of poverty does not show in official figures, and so we miss out on funding to address poverty.
Likewise, the extent of homelessness is hidden from the council’s statistics. I speak to at least thirty households each year who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Many of these households have had long-term private tenancies brought to an end, simply at the choice of their landlord. Many others are homeless following relationship breakdowns. Scotland has the best homelessness legislation in Europe. Anyone who is homeless through no fault of their own has a right to permanent housing with a council or housing associations. But not in a particular town or island. Also there is no temporary accommodation on Arran. This means that many homeless households do not seek help from the council, fearing that they will be moved to the mainland, losing work and disrupting schooling. This in turn means that the council’s figures greatly understate the extent of homelessness.
So what to do about housing on Arran? The Council needs to:-
● Build more Council and housing association houses. This is in North Ayrshire Council’s control, including for housing associations, through their ‘Strategic Housing Investment Plan.’ The Council needs to change its methodology for assessing need to reflect the reality of the island.
● Restrict holiday let licencing to the maximum allowed by the 2022 legislation, and charge double Council Tax on second homes.
● Have a small number of houses for temporary accommodation, so that homeless Arran residents can stay on the island until they are rehoused.
The Scottish Government needs to:-
● Change the law to allow the purchase of land at existing use value.
● Update how they measure poverty to truly assess need and to distribute fairly the funding that we miss out on.
We need politicians who will press the council and government to fix the housing crisis on Arran, to the benefit of both struggling households and those who receive both public and private services, and also to the economy of the island as a whole.
Neil is standing as the candidate for the Scottish Greens in the forth-coming Arran by-election. He will be at the online hustings on Tuesday 10th September. For details on how to join the hustings see the link here