Penwith: troubled beauty

It's one of the jewels in England's crown, home to the dramatic coastline of Land's End, picturesque fishing villages and the artists' haven of St Ives.

But Penwith's beauty is also the root of its housing problems: as holiday-makers and retired people flock to Britain's most westerly district, locals are being squeezed out of the market and support services for the elderly are becoming stretched. Low local incomes and high unemployment exacerbate the problem.

There is hope, however: new legislation allowing council tax on second homes to be raised from 50% to 90% is expected to bring in an extra £1.8m in the next two years. Much of this cash will be spent on new social housing. Stock transfer association Penwith Housing Association began work on the first homes to be funded by the extra council tax just five days after the rules changed on 1 April.

There are more than 3000 holiday homes in Penwith – that's about 10% of all properties in the district, although in some villages the proportion of second homes can be as high as 40%. By contrast, the entire district has just 4000 or so units of social housing.

Finding land for new affordable homes is a major headache for the council because many sites are too small to trigger a requirement for the developer to build affordable homes in return for planning permission under a section 106 agreement.

The council will launch an affordable housing taskforce in June to tackle the problem. The taskforce will seek out suitable sites and work to speed up the planning and development process. With its help, the council hopes to get 70 affordable homes built every year.

David Clough, the council's housing strategy and enabling officer, will be on the taskforce, along with a planning officer and a legal executive. Clough says: "We will appraise all sites, prioritise them and move them on.

"We'll be approaching landowners to see if they will sell to us or transfer the land to a housing association. Before, we had a more reactive approach to ad hoc enquiries that did not deliver what we need."

Many of the sites are likely to be exception sites – ones that get planning permission only on condition that all the housing built is affordable.

The area's appeal to tourists has also complicated the council's efforts to meet the government requirement that B&Bs should not be used for the temporary accommodation of homeless families from 31 March.

Kate Picknett, the council's housing needs research officer, says: "Temporary accommodation is like gold dust because if you're a landlord, you rent it out to the tourist industry. They can make much more money than they would renting it to a family."

Again, the council is taking action. It has struck deals with local landlords to guarantee rents, even if rooms are empty, and in the space of a year the number of homeless families in B&Bs has fallen from 63 to zero.

The next challenge is dealing with the implications of the area's popularity as a retirement spot. Picknett says: "We've got way above the national share of over-60s because people choose to retire down here. Initially, that's fine if they buy their own home, but in 10 or 15 years' time it puts a strain on support services.

"We are looking at where we need to increase sheltered accommodation and the support services that go with that."

If this and the housing taskforce work as well as the measures taken to get homeless families out of B&Bs, the council will soon start to take the edge off its housing crisis.