A war on second home owners in the popular seaside resort of St Ives has spread to an unlikely new battleground - public lavatories.
The Cornish town plans to start charging tourists and the owners of holiday homes to use its eight public lavatories, but full-time residents will still be allowed to relieve themselves for free.
It is the latest display of hostility towards wealthy summer dwellers, who own around a quarter of the area’s homes and have been blamed for pricing locals out of the market.
A ban on the sale of new houses as second homes has already been introduced and the council will soon have new powers allowing it to double council tax on holiday properties.
Until now, all visitors to St Ives have been able to use its lavatories - also including one site the council lets out to a private operator - without having to pay anything.
‘Free public use no longer sustainable’
But St Ives Town Council has claimed this is no longer sustainable as the cost of running the facilities is £135,000, which has been worsened by several instances of vandalism requiring repair work.
Louise Dwelly, the town clerk, said: “Many councils across the country are closing their public toilets because of the huge cost.
“But we understand the importance of public toilets to our visitor economy and this is not an option in a seaside town with beaches.”
Many other councils in Cornwall had introduced charging to cover the costs of maintaining their own facilities, Ms Dwelly said.
She added, however: “Local residents already pay for all these costs through their council tax and we don’t want them to pay twice.”
It is expected that residents will be given a pre-payment card or access code to use the public lavatories.
Relief reserved for permanent residents
The council is also looking at ways to ensure second home owners cannot use their St Ives address to get free entry or share any access codes with Airbnb customers so public lavatories are only genuinely free for locals.
Only those with a primary residence in the town who pay their council tax in St Ives will get to use the lavatories for free.
The new measures are expected to be introduced in time for the summer season, where typically sees hundreds of thousands of tourists visit on St Ives.
Ms Dwelly said: “Toilet charging is more straightforward following the pandemic when the vast majority of people have become very used to cashless transactions.
“There will be no cash/coin options but people can use their smartphone, bank card or purchase a pre-payment card.
“This means that facilities will be safer and less prone to theft and vandalism than if there was cash on site.”
St Ives has so far had mixed fortunes in its attempts to quell the second home frenzy.
A study by the London School of Economics in 2019 found the ban inadvertently led to a reduction in the number of available homes due to building companies finding new work in surrounding areas.
Instead, competition between summer dwellers and local residents intensified as demand switched from new builds to existing homes after the new regulations were introduced.
At the time of the referendum on banning second homes in 2016, the average property price was around £323,000, according to the estate agent Hamptons, just under 14 times the median annual earning in Cornwall.
