Gwynedd seaside village now Wales’ most expensive postcode
A seaside community in Gwynedd is now Wales’ most expensive postcode due to the number of second homes bought there, a study has revealed.
Research by the Times newspaper into the UK’s “golden postcodes” found that the LL53 postcode has the highest per sq ft prices in Wales with an average of £378, and 10 per cent hitting £543 per sq ft.
LL53 includes the seaside village of Abersoch, which has become popular with tourists and second home owners.
“It has an enviable position on the Llŷn peninsula coast close to the mountains of Snowdonia,” the Times newspaper said.
“Abersoch’s blue flag beach is popular with families. It is also home to two popular sailing clubs: Abersoch Sailing Club and the South Caernarvonshire Yacht Club.
“The town, which hosts an annual summer jazz festival, a regatta, and a music festival, is so popular with English tourists it is dubbed by some Cheshire-by-the-Sea.”
Estate agents Garrington Property Finders said that the pandemic property price boom has pushed up values outside the capital in the past couple of years.
Protest
Last year Gwynedd Council closed Abersoch’s Welsh language school after the number of pupils fell to seven.
The council said that they were spending £17,404 per pupil to keep the school open compared to the county average of £4,198.
Following the decision, a spokesperson for pressure group Cymdeithas yr Iaith described the decision as “following the easy path of deserting the local community.”
Ffred Ffransis said: “It is so ironic that in the very week when a major rally is being held outside the Senedd in Cardiff to urge the Government to intervene in the housing market to ensure a future for communities like Abersoch, that the Cabinet of Gwynedd Council itself sinks those hopes by closing the school.
“It’s incredible that not a single member saw the value in the school as a focus for an agenda of rebuilding the local community.
“It was easier to give up on them rather than work with enthusiastic and ready partners among governors and parents.
“Thousands of words of heartfelt responses to the consultation changed nothing.”
Cymdeithas yr Iaith intend to hold a protest to call on the Welsh Government to do more to get to grips with the housing crisis across the nation tomorrow.
The protest will begin on Trefechan bridge in Aberystwyth on the 19th of February, 60 years after Cymdeithas’ first-ever protest at that location.
The rally follows other Cymdeithas yr Iaith protests in Tryweryn and in Newport, Pembrokeshire, last summer and autumn.
The Welsh Government had said that it recognises the challenges facing some communities, noting it is building 20,000 new homes and that Wales is the only UK nation which allows councils to charge up to a 100% premium on the council tax of second home owners.
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No more second homes in wales 🏴 and 100 percent taxes on all second homes in wales 🏴
Ffred, you’re out-of-date. The school has been at very low levels for at least 40 years and catered only for up to 8-year-olds in a wooden building. Most Abersoch children go naturally to Sarn Bach, where they receive a good naturally Welsh-speaking education.
The real issue about Abersoch and the Llyn peninsula is why Welsh Government and Gwynedd Council have failed to build sufficient affordable housing there for many years. They fully understood affordable housing was required but determinedly did not use their powers and borrowing capacity to do much at all. There continues to be a lack of political will to build the affordable houses required. Labour and Plaid are at fault.
The real issue about places like Abersoch is apologists like you absolving people who have no intention of living in the area other than for a few weeks a year of any blame.
Change the market, build affordable homes neither Gwynedd Council or Welsh Government appear motivated to do so?
I wonder what all those holiday home owners in Abersoch would think if a giant council estate was built there!!
I do not think Government or Local Authority is building “bog standard” giant council estates anymore, the proposal is to build affordable houses for rent or purchase for local people with relatively low incomes and low wealth.
Yes let’s make gwynedd the council estate of Wales
No the issue is that many people are on low incomes and have low wealth, they struggle to get mortgages. Either we encourage much greater private investment because there is a good return or the “state” funds affordable housing. Young people move away because of the commercial opportunities elsewhere not only in the U.K. but globally. People work hard locally and earn a living but it is not sufficient to purchase even modest homes. There is an unreality about some of the rhetoric I hear, Labour and Plaid need to do much more they are in the majority nationally and… Read more »