A group of Conservative MPs has organised a lobby of the government to demand a clampdown on Airbnbs and other short lets.

The MPs all represent constituencies in Cornwall, with the member for St Austell and Newquay – Steve Double – taking the lead.

Opening a debate in the House of Commons he said: “There are 18,989 live listings in Cornwall on Airbnb and other platforms. The vast majority of those properties were built to be someone’s home and are now no longer available for local people to live in. By comparison, in October 2023, there were just 895 available residential listings in Cornwall on Rightmove. 

“Those holiday rentals are overwhelmingly in the coastal communities and tourist hotspots we are discussing. We are not against holiday lets. Tourism is vital, but there needs to be a balance. We need more housing that is genuinely affordable to local people, particularly for our key workers.

“The situation in Cornwall is serious. It is difficult to understate how bad it is. The perfect storm of increased demand, rocketing prices that outstrip average wages and a growing population has led to record numbers of people being on Cornwall’s housing register. 

“Last week, there were 26,136 people waiting to be housed in Cornwall. Then there are those households that are currently without a home: sadly, 857 households in Cornwall are in temporary accommodation, and 438 of them are families with children.

“The answer is not just to build more houses. Since the Conservatives took the lead [of Cornwall Council] in 2021 in accelerating house building: it has built 5,442 houses during that time, 1,322 of which are affordable and earmarked for people with a local connection. But over the past 20 years, Cornwall has had above-national average levels of house building, so our experience shows that we cannot simply build to meet the ever-growing demand. When a market is broken, we need the Government to intervene, and there can be little doubt that the housing market in Cornwall is currently broken.”

Another Cornwall Tory MP – Cherilyn Mackrory, who represents Truro and Falmouth – told MPs in the same debate:  “This issue became most acute to me after Covid when I had a village constituency surgery in St Agnes on the north coast of my constituency. Within two hours I had had 15 constituents and families through the doors, and every single one was either being evicted or their rent was going up so much that they could not stay. 

“Pretty much all those properties were going to be flipped into Airbnbs. Since then, as a cohort of south-west Conservative MPs, we have been lobbying the Government to make changes in this area to ensure that we do not let this continue to happen.”

However, the call has degenerated into a party political slanging match with Liberal Democrat Andrew George – a former MP in Cornwall. 

George has told the Cornwall Live website: “Inviting Conservative MPs to advise on the housing emergency in Cornwall is like asking the arsonist to put out their fire. 

“The Conservatives have poured petrol on the flames; handed out over £400m of taxpayers’ money to holiday home owners in Cornwall in the last decade and are still shelling out many £millions this year through a covert tax loophole they created, in spite of assuring us five years ago that they’d halt this scandal.

“Their policies, which have included turning Cornwall’s housing stock into a money-making racket for the wealthy and which has helped inflate local house prices beyond the reach of local families, are part of the problem. Not a solution. The Conservative government insisted that Cornwall accepts an extra 7,500 homes onto its already excessive housebuilding target, “to meet the growing demand for second homes”.

“On top of this, they flatly rejected my proposal 13 years ago to introduce planning law which would restrict second and holiday homes and which would mean that any attempt to use a permanent home as a “non-permanent residence”, should require planning permission and would then come with higher taxes and restrictions. Thousands of local families still face eviction from their rented home to make way for yet another holiday let.”