The Highland clearances are still going on
It’s like the Highland clearances didn’t stop, they are still going on. A very strong statement perhaps, from a local I speak to in Fort William, but in some ways you can understand the sentiment, if you are here for any length of time. Many of the local people, the Highland people, can no longer afford to buy a house or rent here, and so, especially the young, are forced to move away. Whereas before it was to be replaced by sheep, now it is to be replaced mostly by wealthier people, including those who are snapping up the properties for their second (and sometimes third and fourth) homes.
At the last count in 2018, there were 3,800 second homes in the Highlands. Almost a fifth of the houses in Skye are second houses or holiday homes. Some of those properties have as much as doubled in price in the space of only 5 years, and have especially gone up since the lockdown. A house price history search on Rightmove, shows that in 2017 a 3-bedroom property in Fort William was bought for £102,000. Less than five years later, in January of this year, it sold for £200,000. In Kinlochleven, a village an hour’s drive away, a 3 bedroom in February 2019 sold for 82,000, late last year it went for 125,000. There are many other dramatic price increases elsewhere.
“I am working two jobs and sometimes 60-hour weeks, just to scrape something together to try and get a mortgage.” Says Gordon Cameron, who is working at a Fort William restaurant. You can see his frustration, and hear it in his voice. “But it’s almost impossible. And all my friends are the same.”
But the local population can’t work here if they have nowhere to live. So, while the outward migration continues as it has for years, it has always been European workers who have come to fill in the spaces and reduce the urgent job vacancies.
I have previously worked in many places across the Highlands, including in different hospitality jobs in different hotels and restaurants, and for me it has always been a joy to work with foreign friends, and get an interesting cultural mix too. I made many good friends amongst the Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, and other people who would come here and work hard. But due to Brexit- which Scotland and indeed the Highlands never voted for- this is basically no more, and the numbers left are a tiny fraction of what they were. I have seen it all first hand, and just now the hospitality industry is decimated for staff. And that is an understatement. Walk down the main street of Fort William, or indeed any town centre in the Highlands, and you will see businesses closed during peak hours. Businesses closed two days a week just so the staff can get some days off. Businesses operating for only 4 days.
“All across the Isle of Skye, businesses are struggling for staff”, says Deidre Curley, owner and manager of the Sligachan Hotel. “It’s many factors, but Brexit is probably the biggest. It’s just too difficult to get European workers in without them having settled status. They are almost completely gone. I have at least seven excellent former staff members who came back year after year before Brexit, who I could call right now, and they would be here, if they could. But they can’t anymore. And housing is a big problem too. It’s too expensive to rent anything, so most hotels and businesses don’t have enough staff accommodation. And for locals, it’s cheaper to move away and get a flat in Glasgow! I’ve lived here all my life, and it’s really changed. Most businesses here are only open for 5 days due to lack of staff, and this year I think could maybe be the year when a lot of them have to give it up and close, or have to decide what to do.”
It doesn’t seem fair that some people are allowed to buy and live what they want and where they want, simply because they have money to blow, while local people can’t, and the European community that could work here and help to build up the economies and help local businesses, are no longer able or allowed to.
But what can be done about it? Well it seems the only solution is to regulate it, and the Scottish Government are in the process of doing that, and have now brought out legislation that will target short-term letting properties and second homes. Local authorities have until the 1st of October to establish licensing schemes, and existing hosts have until April 23rd to apply for licences for the places they are letting.
Some towns in Cornwall, who had similar problems, have already done this, and have effectively banned second home ownership, mostly for new-build houses. And Wales too, has recently increased council taxes on second homes to a premium and set new local rules for holiday lets. From April 2023 the maximum level at which local authorities can set council tax premiums on second homes and long-term empty properties will be increased to 300 percent. Member of the Welsh parliament, Sian Gwenllian said, “It is clear that we as a country are facing a housing crisis. So many people cannot afford to live in their local areas, and the situation has worsened during the pandemic. These changes will make a difference, enabling councils to respond to their local circumstances, and start to close the loophole in the current law. It's a first, but important, step on a journey towards a new housing system that ensures that people have the right to live in their community.
Through the Co-operation Agreement, we are committed to introducing a package of measures to tackle the injustices in the housing market. Today's announcement is just one part of that wider package. Second homes are a symptom of a wider problem - a market that treats property, not as a home, but as a way of making a profit. By working across the parties…we will introduce more measures, as soon as we can, to make house prices and rents genuinely affordable for people.”
There is also a loud call for building more houses, and especially affordable houses (there is a minimum of 400 applications on the Skye and Lochalsh Housing list all year round). And perhaps that too, is what’s needed. There is not much room in the small Fort William area and the glens to expand within themselves, and we have to be careful as it is absolutely crucial not to decimate the beautiful wildernesses and landscapes too much, and to destroy the gem of what the Scottish and Highland landscape is. Personally, I would like to see Mallaig expand into a town, with affordable houses, and a sustainable community within it. But it is essential to me, that it and any other places, would be based on something like the Findhorn Foundation in Moray, with buildings that are beautiful and unique and would fit with the town they are located in, and are not the identical, flat-pack rows of commercially driven pop-up houses that ruin a place’s character and now make so many places look so generic. Mallaig is on the popular tourist route to Skye, and close enough to Fort William, yet just enough removed from some of the most scenic places so as to hopefully not damage them. But that is only one idea.
Letting out rooms or properties can be a great and much needed source of income for people, and why shouldn’t they be able to do that? It gives locals and owners a financial help, brings money into the economy, and helps with the booming tourism industry which is only getting bigger each year. But perhaps it does need to be more closely monitored, so that communities are not ripped out and displaced, or houses left empty.
A few months ago I was visiting the old city of Tallinn, the medieval-looking capital of Estonia. Except it was like walking through a museum. There was no Energy. No soul. No life. No vibrancy. Nothing. So many places had been bought over for holiday lets that all the houses and apartments and streets were no more than the empty places of ghosts that once were.
Is that what we want?