We asked you to submit your questions to candidates standing in the 2024 General Election.
From all your submissions, we chose 10 that represented the broad issues you wanted answers to.
We asked every candidate we had contact details for to respond.
We’ll be publishing them in the run-up to the General Election with the responses from the candidates who replied from each constituency.
These are the answers are from candidates standing in the Penrith & Solway constituency.
What will you and your party do to look at second homes in tourism hotspots, which are stopping local people getting on the property ladder?
Mark Jenkinson, the Conservative Party
We’ve introduced new rules to control short-term lets and improve access to affordable housing . There are areas locally where the number of short-term lets is saturating the local housing market, and where other impacts are felt – such as declining parish precepts where there is infrastructure such as toilets and play parks to maintain, whose use is often inversely proportional in the circumstances.
Homeowners will have to secure planning permission for future short-term lets, giving local authorities greater powers to manage the number of holiday lets in our area; A mandatory national register of short-term lets will be established, so that local authorities can understand the impact of short-term lets on our community; We’ve given the council powers to introduce new council tax premium; And the Furnished Holiday Lettings’ tax regime will be abolished.
But at the same time, we can’t ignore the valuable contribution that our visitor economy brings to Cumbria. Many businesses rely on tourists, and they all need somewhere to stay. We must not make holiday lets the bogeyman for other issues.
We need more affordable homes that local people can afford to rent or buy. And that means building new homes.
So we’re also introducing new measures to cut the red tape that stops derelict sites and unused buildings being turned into new homes. All commercial buildings will now have the freedom to be converted into new homes, allowing the quick repurposing of shops, offices, and other buildings, which also aligns better with the future of our changing high streets allowing them to remain viable well into the future.
The Lake District National Park’s current stance of preventing development to preserve the Lake District in aspic will only serve to hasten the end of the Lake District as we know it.
Susan Denham-Smith, the Green Party
Excess second homes in tourist hotspots is a particular problem in Cumbria but is linked to the need for providing fairer greener homes for all, as well as providing 150,000 new social homes a year and end the right to buy, so that the homes belong to the community forever.
The Green Party will support local councils and communities to have the funding and the powers to make the planning decision that are right for them.
Local authorities need to be given the resources to act as guardians of the land and the built environment.
Being able to have a place-making and place-shaping role they will have the powers within their local plan to set viability levels of redevelopment and take back the power of building control from developers.
