§ Mr. Nicholas BennettTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales what estimates he has as to the number of second houses liable for community charge in each district council area.
§ Mr. GristThe Welsh Office is presently consulting on where the boundary between domestic and non-domestic properties should be drawn and thus which properties should be subject to the standard community charge. It is therefore not yet possible to provide the figures requested. General information on second homes is, however, available, and table 2.7 of the 1986 Welsh intercensal survey, a copy of which is in the Library, provides estimates of their distribution among districts. These figures can only provide a broad indication of this distribution as they are derived from a sample survey of about 60,000 Welsh households and there are some difficulties in distinguishing between second homes and other categories of housing in a general survey of this type.