“Villagers ‘proud’ of overturning second home crackdown in ‘David and Goliath moment'”

A BBC story with that title warmed my heart.

A group of villagers who fought to overturn a council’s crackdown on second home-ownership say they are “proud” of their “David and Goliath moment”.

About 18 months ago, the council of Gwynedd, in north-west Wales, made what it called a “proactive step” to limit the number of second homes in the area.

Gwynedd Council, which reasonably enough calls itself by its Welsh name Cyngor Gwynedd since it is in a Welsh-speaking area, is currently under the control of Plaid Cymru.

It hoped that by introducing legislation requiring homeowners in the county to seek planning permission before turning a residential property into a second home, it would help local people who were being priced out of the market.

But some residents of Abersoch, a village on the Llŷn Peninsula which sees about 30,000 visitors during peak summer months, said the knock-on effects from the legislation – known as Article 4 – had been tough.

They described tradespeople needing to look for work further afield and long-time visitors feeling unwelcome.

The People of Gwynedd Against Article 4 campaign group took legal action against the council, Cyngor Gwynedd, and in November 2025 Article 4 was quashed.

Good for the campaigners. The BBC article later quotes two solicitors who brought the case on behalf of “People of Gwynedd Against Article 4”:

Laura Alliss, 38, who lives in Abersoch, said she initially threw away a council notice about Article 4 before she said she realised it affected everyone in Gwynedd.

“I just threw it in the bin because it just said it only affected you if you were a second homeowner, which we weren’t,” she said.

Enlli Angharad Williams, 29, who grew up in Abersoch, realised Article 4 “really impacted” her ability to re-mortgage when coupled with an existing Section 106, external restriction.

The two solicitors helped get a judicial review commissioned after £105,000 was raised by a fundraising group.

Enlli said her friends and family were initially “quite angry” after she put her name down as a claimant against the policy, until they came to understand its impact.

Enlli described it as a stressful time, saying she was “ecstatic” at the decision to scrap the policy, adding: “I’m proud of the community, actually.

“I think it’s shown how much community there is left here.

“We can’t live without the tourism here.”

There cannot be that many Welsh solicitors called “Enlli Angharad Williams” (for those familiar with the IPA, her first name is said /ˈɛnɬi/) so I am pretty sure that the Enlli Angharad Williams who appears on the “Meet the team” page for a Welsh law firm (and volunteers for the Abseroch lifeboat) is the same person as the lady just quoted. The page says that “Enlli is a fluent Welsh speaker and is happy to discuss matters in the medium of Welsh”. I’m glad to see Welsh speakers push back against the ill-considered tendency of Plaid Cymru to curtail property rights whenever they can. What Plaid Cymru think they are doing is enabling young adults who grew up in Welsh-speaking households to afford to be able to buy houses in their local area, hence keeping it Welsh-speaking, rather than being priced out by the English-speaking people who buy second homes there. But nothing drives young families out of an area faster than a lack of jobs. There are places in Liverpool – one of them ironically called “Kensington” like the swanky London borough – that were so depressed that in 2013 Liverpool city council was selling houses there for £1. Sure, that is at the extreme end of the spectrum, but there are plenty of places in the UK now, both rural and urban, where houses sell for prices that wouldn’t buy you a broom cupboard in London, and wouldn’t buy you much in Gwynedd either. Why? Because the jobs are elsewhere. And after a few years of that, the people are elsewhere too.