Opinion: Tourism is vital for Suffolk - but so are residents

It was the start of the first full week of most schools' summer holidays and the place was buzzing.

Southwold does, of course, have a reputation as being a really classy holiday resort - full of fantastic restaurants, cafes, and really nice, upmarket, seaside shops.

It also happens to be the home of the finest brewery in the world - or at least the brewery that produces the finest beer in the world which keeps all the cafes, pubs and restaurants well lubricated!

I was born and brought up just down the coast from Southwold.

It, and the neighbouring village of Walberswick on the other side of the Blyth, were the best beaches to go to as a kid - they always had lots of glorious sand to make castles out of rather than the rather miserable stones down the coast at Aldeburgh!

As a day-tripper from Ipswich, Southwold still seems like the ideal summer destination - especially when your trip includes a visit to one of its famous restaurants.

Tourism brings in millions of pounds a year to places like Southwold and the many other honeypots of Suffolk - not just coastal towns but places like Lavenham, Long Melford, and Flatford as well.

In most of these places tourism is a clear benefit with no discernible downside. Places like Felixstowe and Lowestoft benefit hugely from the industry but are large enough and diverse enough to provide other industries as well and tourism doesn't distort the housing market too seriously.

However local councils and residents are becoming aware that the attractions of some smaller places like Southwold are putting a strain on their actual communities and making them less attractive to their traditional residents.

It's well known that property prices in Southwold, Walberswick and Aldeburgh put many of the homes that come on to the market out of reach for most local people.

As we walked back to our car at Southwold Pier from the town centre we walked along streets of former fishermen's cottages that would make ideal starter homes for young people - but they all had tell-tale key safes on the front door indicating that the whole street was holiday lets.

Many properties in Southwold are now holiday lets. (Image: citizenside.com)

I have nothing against holiday lets - we use them every year for our holiday in a different parts of the UK. We recently returned from a week in a converted corn store in south Wales.

But I can understand the concerns that are raised when whole streets are turned into holiday lets - it can turn a community into a ghost town in the close season.

I was told about a couple who loved Southwold and decided to downsize and retire to the town from their home near London. They moved in at the start of June and loved their first few months.

Come November they discovered it was really quiet - and from January to Easter they really felt incredibly lonely and isolated there. 

Within two years they had sold up and moved back nearer their former home.

Now of course that is an extreme case - and the more serious issue is that young people are finding themselves forced out of a community their families may have lived in for generations because of the lack of affordable homes.

There really is a need for more affordable homes - probably ideally local authority or housing association accommodation. 

But there must also be changes to the Right to Buy legislation. Right to Buy was a hugely popular policy when brought in during the early 1980s - and turned millions of tenants into homeowners.

However it caused massive damage to stocks of social housing that councils are still suffering from today.

Nowhere is that damage more clear than in tourist honeypots - and to really creating thriving 12-month a year communities there are issues here that need to be addressed.

The opinions expressed in this column are the personal views of Paul Geater and do not necessarily reflect views held by this newspaper, its sister publications or its owner and publisher Newsquest Media Group Ltd.