WEALTHY outsiders are to be banned from building new holiday homes in the Cairngorms National Park under plans aimed at stopping rural communities from becoming tourist “ghost towns”.

The park wants to restrict the sale of new housing within its 1,467-square-mile boundaries to people who live, work or have family links in the area. It means that outsiders will no longer be allowed to buy or build new housing for use as second homes or as holiday homes for rent.

The Cairngorms is Britain’s largest national park, with a vast mountain wilderness at its heart. It encompasses large areas of the Highlands, Moray, Aberdeenshire and Angus and is home to 17,000 people and 25 per cent of Britain’s threatened species.

Its spectacular scenery is a magnet for tourists, but in property terms has resulted in an epidemic of wealthy second-homers, who now own one-in-five of all houses within the park. That figure rises to about half in some small villages such as Braemar. The knock-on effect has been a steep rise in property prices, up by as much as 13 per cent a year, placing even the most modest, semi-detached family home beyond the financial reach of locals.

Don McKee, head of planning at the Cairngorms National Park, said: “This is not just affecting people on low incomes. Market rates for existing housing and new-built housing is in some cases beyond the reach of those on moderate incomes, such as policemen and teachers. In places like Deeside and Speyside where most of the park’s population live, a relatively modest semi is now selling for around £200,000. People here work in tourism or agriculture so they don’t have high incomes to meet that kind of price.”

The concern is that if the situation continues unchecked, it could herald the terminal decline of rural communities, threatening the viability of businesses and schools as the younger working population is forced out because it cannot find anywhere affordable to live.

“The fear is that you end up not having living communities any more. People are only there to provide accommodation for tourists or those with private second homes, but there is no vibrant local economy or social life. As a result the area loses its character and its cultural integrity is diminished,” Mr McKee said.

The draft plan proposes limiting new-built housing in the park to residents who qualify for subsidised social housing, or people who have lived in the area permanently for three years, or can prove that they, or their partner, has a full-time job in the park area.

The guidelines are still out to consultation and will be drawn up at the end of January.

They echo similar residency restrictions governing the sale of new housing in other national parks, which all have problems with second homes, including the Brecon Beacons, Dartmoor, Snowdonia, Exmoor, the North Yorkshire Moors, Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District. The Lake District is at present consulting over how to tackle the problem.

Michael Foxley, vice-convener of Highlands Council, said: “There is now a very large number of people capable of selling a relatively modest house in the South East and arriving in the Highlands with disposable capital in excess of £1 million. There is nobody locally who remotely has that amount of disposable capital and they will always be outbid.”

But critics said that the move bordered on social engineering. Mary Scanlon, Conservative communities spokeswoman and a Highland MSP, said: “The freedom of movement and the rights to buy and sell property are fundamental parts of democracy. A policy of keeping outsiders out would lead to a park that stagnates rather than innovates, and it smacks of petty prejudice.”

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