Lay My Hat

And as a small diversionary follow on, who watched Jeremy Corbyn's speech to the party faithful ?

"When" he gets into power he will be slapping a tax on all second home owners. After all if you have a second home, then you belong to the few (i.e. the rich) so you're making too much money

... Well its been a long time, but finally a reply from Heather Wheeler, Minister for Housing and Homelessness has arrived.

It sets out the Government's view that it supports the sharing economy by "... increasing the amount of competitively priced accommodation available for tourists."

However, she points out that "where short term lets breach the rules, responsibility lies with the local authority....." and also "...we are encouraging the Short Term Accommodation Association (STAA) to drive up standards and promote best practice in the industry, and to share data on booking with local authorities to aid their enforcement and monitoring functions."

Furthermore, she writes that the APPG Tourism report is welcomed but "... there are no plans to introduce additional legislative requirements on owners of short term lets."

She continued, "... we do not intend to give powers to local authorities to require the owner to be present if a property is used for the tourism accommodation..."

(Yes, I checked the grammar. It is as written.)

I rather feel the government have other issues on their plate at present. (I write on the eve of another major Parliamentary vote.)

If I were a member of the APPG I might feel rather aggrieved and ignored as this was a cornerstone of the recommendations, but I suppose Government can't please all of the people all of the time.

For me... I am happy with the reply.... for the present.

Any thoughts?

In Wales owner of AST has to live within 200 miles otherwise agent has to be used.