Cynnydd Ffrynt Gwrth-Dwristiaeth Cymru | AKA ‘Senedd Cymru’
Most small accommodation businesses look to achieve around 60% occupancy rates to be considered successful, so how would you feel if your ‘Government’ said you had to achieve 72% or pay the penalty.
The Welsh Senedd continue to press on with their draconian measures to kill off tourism and small accommodation businesses in Wales with key measures, already set in motion for 2023/24FY and no doubt the ‘registration’ one and others will follow.
Minimum let days rule, from 70 to 182 days, otherwise money will be demanded.
Everyone must register, be certified and rated, for which money will be demanded.
Granny annexes classed as second homes, for which money will be demanded.
Tourism tax, charged to visitors via a percentage on their accommodation.
They insist that they are consulting the industry, which in itself is true, but what they don’t say is that they completely ignoring that feedback. Now you may think I am just being cynical, but….
The Professional Association of Self Caterers UK (PASC) and its partners have and continue to put up very robust opposition to the 70 day and 182 day issue. We even suggested 105 days which is line with HMRC’s threshold and we put forward 500 written responses against. However, they still chose to go with the 9 responses from those that supported 182 days. All very disappointing.
PASC UK
Indeed their own statistics show an average occupancy rate of 51% for Ceredigion, where we are. Going with their new 252 minimum days that we must be available to let for and their own occupancy figure of 51%, this equates to no higher than 128 days at most, that should be booked. Not 182 as they want, which would be an occupancy rate of 72%, that is very hard to achieve, especially in this economic climate.
Then we have the ‘everyone must register and be certified’ if you operate an accommodation business in Wales approach, well this is obviously just the Senedd revenue raising and jobs for the boys. All the assumptions they make in explaining why why it is necessary, fly in the face of what ‘market forces’ already enforce. They go on for example about minimum standards, mentioning PAT testing, EICR certification, public liability insurance, risk assessment statements and the like, all of which are covered/required by your insurance if you want to be covered and by the booking agents who require them anyway. If not you would probably be breaking the law anyway, so we don’t need additional interference. As for quality and cleanliness standards, if you are performing badly in this area you will lose customers anyway as your reviews will be rubbish, so self policing. It’s called ‘market forces’ or is that too capitalist word for the Senedd?
Basically all this meddling is just another expense that pushes us towards the ‘I won’t bother then’ route, so leading to a decline in small accommodation businesses in Wales. Which is one of the few ‘industries’ that can actually thrive here in Wales if the Senedd would just stop sticking their oar in. It’s already bad enough, that to succeed in getting sufficient bookings you need people like ‘Booking dot Com’ and ‘West Wales Holiday Cottages’ and the like, who take a decent proportion of the booking fee as commission already. Then there are the operating costs, property maintenance, plus ‘cleaners’ that you need as the good ones are not cheap.
We are not a ‘Cash Cow’ for the commercially challenged and Economics illiterate politicians to sponge off.
Then we come to the ‘second homes’ thing, how can a flat on the first floor of an outbuilding, within the curtlidge of the main house, be considered a second home? It is never going to be sold or rented out separately, so the Senedd’s stance of adding to the housing stock is nonsense. If it come to it, we shall just rip out the kitchen or whatever, so it can no longer be classified as a so called ‘self contained unit’ by the VOA, which helps nobody.
At least running this business contributes to the local economy, unlike our politicians. Putting too many hoops for people to jump through, they simply stop jumping through them!
Yes there are bad businesses out there, but they will still be out there with this legislation, as they work off the radar. This to put it simply is lazy legislation from a Senedd who just can’t be bothered to make use of the rules and laws already at their disposal.
UPDATE OCTOBER: Solar energy generation for October was 212.67 kWh from the 4.5kW array
Many of you have asked about our solar panel installation which was installed in Early September this year, after I calculated that in theory it should pay back in ~11 years based on the calculations I did, see link below. This was based on the electricity supplier at the time British Gas and the prices per unit I was on then.
The process of the install all went okay, other than people should be aware that if being fitted to a slate roof, there will be some losses and as such will need spares, we ended up using around 30 new slates in total, not because the lads did a bad job but the existing slates were either already broken or cracked already.
The new PV Solar installation is working well and is helping us to reduce our dependance on the grid, which judging by the number of power cuts we have around here is not a bad thing, let alone what will probably happen this winter. The solar array itself is around 4.5kW with a 3.6kW hybrid inverter, plus a 13.4kW battery bank to make best use of what power is generated, as this helps balance it all out. We also added an electric vehicle charger and a Solar iBoost device for the immersion in the annex, which diverts electricity to the immersion when there is surplus power which would otherwise be bound for the grid.
There have been a few teething issues with it, but all working well now and the guys came out and solved the issues very promptly.
The roof faces SSW so pretty good for catching the sun, okay so the sun don’t shine much in the winter, but at least I can charge the batteries up at night on cheap rate grid power and use later when it would otherwise be peak rate.
Now when I started this, we were with both British Gas and SSE as we had two meter boxes, one for the House (with BG) and one for the Annex (with SSE). Now this was obviously costing us two standing charges and the hassle of dealing with two bills and what with the way the market was going that could be seen earlier in the year this just had to change but what….
It just happened that we had a chap stay with us who worked for Energy Local who was working locally at the Capel Dewi solar PV site and would we be interested in their energy supply idea, which they were offering in our area now in conjunction with Octopus. First thought was yeah right pull the other one, as seems too good to be true, but after some explaining of the principles and why ‘our’ energy prices are so ridiculously high we thought lets go for it, particularly as they are associated with Octopus Energy.
Lets put it this way British Gas were charging around 30p/kWh with a standing charge of say 50p/day whereas with EnergyLocal/Octopus we pay a variable tariff depending on the time of the day, but the average price is around 19p/kWh with a standing charge of 27p/day, so not a hard decision really.
The next step is to get the MCS certificate so I can contact Octopus for their export/outgoing tariff.
NB – It was the SSE meter that we kept, but changed provider and the BG meter was removed by BG themselves. However I didn’t reckon on British Gas being such a bunch of useless idiots, I wont go into the detail here but they were utterly useless and probably fraudulent in their activities, in the process of getting rid of them and afterwards. Even though they removed ‘their’ meter and I cancelled my account with them, they still tried to charge me for a supply and electricity usage, even tried to restart the direct debits (without a meter), very stressful!
We were able to take a break recently to visit the National Botanic Garden of Wales, about 45 minutes drive away near to Carmarthen. This is offers an amazing day trip for all, not only is there the focal point of the ‘Dome’ with its collection of mediterranean plants and personally I prefer it to the one in Cornwall by the way as less pretentious.
But also parklands with some great walks around the grounds, lakes and over bridges, not forgetting a waterfall and lake overflows, best take a map though as a lot of routes/paths.
After having lunch we had a look around the main thoroughfare up to the cafe/shop and the walled gardens which I can imagine get very busy in the main holiday periods.
We recently knocked down the ramshackle old crinkle tin garage and whilst sorting through the wood pile for good stuff that we could still use, the corner of of my eye picked up something. Upon taking a closer look it was a little bit of history, probably to signify when the ‘garage’ was built and by.
Since finding it, a bit of further investigation has revealed what it says as…
Flight Sergeant Ivor Bowen
RWP Jones
27th March 1944
Mrs Ivor Bowen (supervisor)
Apparently he flew Spitfires during the war, with honours and passed away in 2003.
I still have it tucked away, so any relatives/descendants can lay claim to it.
These are the scores on the doors, from our platform partners, so pretty pleased and many thanks to all our guests for your support.
We have tried a few companies of this type over recent years, but these three are the ones which work for us… Booking.Com have a good extranet system and bring in a lot of customers. PitchUp are great for the Glamping Hay Loft and a perfect match. AirBnB work well with the B&B side of the business offering us flexibility. Yes they all take a commission, but currently worth it.
Of the other ones that we have tried, but for various reasons just didn’t work out… Expedia are okay in themselves but the extranet system is terrible and nowhere near enough bookings to make up for it, Sykes lets just not go there. We found the next two, Vrbo and Home Away pretty pointless actually, I can’t think of a single booking from them.
