More than a dozen holiday homes in Ashfield

The 2021 census figures from the Office for National Statistics highlight the growing problem holiday lets are having on the housing market, reducing supply and driving up house prices, especially in tourist areas, such as Wales and South-West England.

Generation Rent, a campaign group aimed at protecting renters' rights, said the high concentration of holiday homes is “taking properties out of the reach of people who need somewhere to live”.

The figures show there were about 15 holiday homes in Ashfield district when the census was taken in March 2021 – 0.3 holiday homes for every 1,000 dwellings.

Excluding the Isles of Scilly, South Hams in Devon had the highest rate of holiday homes, at 44.1 per 1,000 dwellings, followed by similarly touristy areas – Gwynedd, which contains Snowdonia in north Wales, North Norfolk and Anglesey.

In the UK, more than 75,000 addresses were used as holiday homes in 2021. Of these, about 3,070 were in the East Midlands, 1.4 per 1,000 dwellings.

Dan Wilson Craw, Generation Rent deputy director, said: “Airbnb has made owning a holiday home more lucrative and we saw a huge increase over the coronavirus pandemic when international travel was suspended for much of 2021.

"There is fierce competition for the limited number of homes coming on the market and it is pricing out people who grew up in these communities and want to work in the tourist industries Airbnb is meant to be supporting."

He called on local authorities to license holiday let operators and introduce higher council tax on second homes. He also urged the Government to remove “tax perks which make holiday lets even more profitable than normal tenancies”.

A Government spokesman said it has already introduced a higher rate of stamp duty for second properties, closed tax loopholes on holiday lets and will give councils the power to apply a council tax premium of up to 100 per cent on second homes through the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill.

He said: “We are taking action to combat the adverse impact second homes can have on communities, particularly in tourist areas.”