Nimby Watch: The politician wrecking Skye’s economy

In this edition of Nimby Watch, we’re taking the high road up to Scotland (but not for our summer holidays, we promise) …

Right then, where are we headed this time? Isn’t it obvious? We’re in the frankly beautiful environs of An t-Eilean Sgitheanach.

I’m sorry, I didn’t quite follow that. Where did you just say? Ah. Then you’re part of the problem. You probably know it better as the Isle of Skye, the biggest island of the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland.

Oh, fantastic. What a beautiful place for a summer holiday! Well, isn’t that typical of your selfish attitude? Like a lot of popular UK holiday destinations, the Isle of Skye is battling a series of challenges. Local young people tend not to hang around, moving to bigger towns and cities on the mainland, not least because the cost of living is so high – particularly because it’s difficult to secure affordable housing.

I still don’t see how this is my fault. You never do. But the beautiful holiday cottage that you’re looking to rent is a home that could have gone to a local resident. If the only people competing for homes on the Isle of Skye were locals, rather than second home buyers or investors from across the world, then prices might be lower.

I suppose that’s technically true, but – I’m going to let you finish, but the problem is worse than you realise. The Isle of Skye is one of the regions that’s soon going to be declared a Special Language Area, which is part of an effort to stop or even reverse the trend of old languages dying out. In this case, the language in question is Scots Gaelic, hence our use of the island’s name in that language, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach.

Oh, I thought you were just clearing your throat. That’s a bad joke, and you should feel bad for making it. You especially shouldn’t let Scottish Greens MSP – and candidate for the party’s leadership – Ross Greer catch you making it, as he’s making plans to help protect these language areas. Specifically, he wants to make it more expensive to buy second homes in Special Language Areas, so that Scots Gaelic speakers aren’t forced to move away, losing their language skills in the process.

That does seem to make some sense, I suppose – if you’re got a relatively niche language, you’re only going to preserve it if the people who speak it stay together. This seems to be true, yes, and it is also true that difficulty in securing affordable housing is cited as one of the main reasons young people who grew up in rural areas like this move to towns and cities.

There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there? There is no way that you actually like this plan. You know me so well. In fact, there are several ‘buts’ on the way. The first is that the other main reason given for moving away – in fact, the number one reason in most surveys – is that young people struggle to find employment at home, and so move to find jobs. This also factors into what qualifies as ‘affordable’ housing: if you’ve got a well-paying job near the area you grew up, rent or mortgages being somewhat higher is not necessarily a problem.

So… what does making second homes more expensive have to do with jobs? If you believed campaigners against holidaymakers, very little. If you look at straightforward economic analysis, almost everything: tourism and tourism-related retail are dominant players in the Isle of Skye’s private sector economy. Relatively rich people coming over and spending a lot of their money is the lifeblood of the local economy.

And they need places to stay while they’re there? Exactly. And the logic of increasing the cost of second homes is treating housing supply as finite. There are only so many homes, and so we need fewer of them to go to tourists, and more of them to go to locals. The result of this policy working exactly as it is intended to work is that more locals are chasing fewer jobs, because they have displaced some of the island’s tourist population. That’s what a ‘win’ looks like.

So what is the fix then? It’s not exactly difficult: build more homes. Build specialist holiday homes, if there’s demand for those. If there isn’t, build efficient modern homes that would be great to live in year-round but lack the ‘charm’ holidaymakers look for. Instead of rationing out existing housing as if it’s a scarce commodity… why not just have more of it?

It can’t be that easy, though: isn’t the point of Skye that it’s a beautiful unspoiled land? We can’t just concrete the whole thing over. We can’t, no. But a few more homes aren’t at risk of doing that. Skye has about eight people for each km² of land. By comparison, Scotland has around 70 per km², and England has 430 per km². Skye could double or triple its housing stock and it would still be almost entirely unspoiled, if we’re honest.

So you, an English person living in England, are saying you know better than a Scottish MSP how to protect the Scots Gaelic language and the Isle of Skye? Yes, yes I am.

I’m sure that’ll go down just great…

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