14th January 2017
By Graham Smith

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has added his voice to calls for limits to the numbers of second homes in Cornwall.

In a BBC interview Mr Corbyn said he was very interested in the recent referendum in St Ives, which seeks to use planning policies to control the use of new properties.

“There’s a massive housing issue and a massive poverty issue,” he said. “You can be poor and still live in a beautiful place.

“You can live in a chocolate box like village and still be poor. Still not have a bus service. Still not have a job. And still not be able to get to a job in a nearby town unless you can afford to buy a car. So that has to change.

“So we need polices that do provide housing in those areas and do limit the amount of second homes that are empty so much of the year.

“And so I’m very interested in the referendum held in St Ives and the discussions that have taken place in other areas about a limit on the number of second homes that are often vacant for so much of the year and provide round-the-year housing for the entire population.

“It can’t be right that an area with so much potential and so much beauty also has low pay.”

Mr Corbyn went on to call for increased funding of local government, to improve social care and relieve pressures on Cornwall’s health service. He criticised the proposed shake-up to Cornwall’s health service as “seeming to be the opposite of what it says” and suggested that small cottage hospitals could be part of a solution to “delayed discharge” from general hospitals, rather than the cause of NHS funding problems.