A Reform UK MP has found herself at the centre of a hypocrisy row after buying an £800,000 second home on Anglesey just two days after writing to a minister about the damage second home ownership causes to Welsh rural communities.
Sarah Pochin completed the purchase of a Grade II listed property on the southern coast of Ynys Môn shortly after penning her concerns to government about how second homes are pricing local people out of the housing market in places like Anglesey.
The timing has raised more than a few eyebrows. Anglesey is one of the Welsh communities hit hardest by the second homes crisis, with local families and young people increasingly unable to afford to stay in the area they grew up in. House prices have been pushed up for years by buyers from outside Wales snapping up holiday properties and retreats, leaving many locals with little choice but to move away.
Wales has been grappling with the second homes issue for some time now. The Welsh Government introduced a council tax premium on second homes, allowing local authorities to charge up to 300 percent on top of the standard rate in a bid to cool demand and free up housing stock for permanent residents. Gwynedd and Anglesey councils have both used these powers aggressively, arguing that their communities cannot survive if homes keep being turned into holiday lets or weekend getaways for people who live elsewhere.
For a politician to write to a minister flagging those exact concerns and then complete a purchase of that kind just 48 hours later is the sort of thing that tends to stick. Critics have been quick to point out the contradiction, with some arguing it perfectly sums up the gap between what politicians say and what they actually do when it comes to housing in Wales.
Pochin secured the Clwyd South seat for Reform UK at the last general election, part of the wave of Reform gains that shook up the political landscape across England and Wales. The party has positioned itself as a voice for ordinary people fed up with out of touch politicians, which makes the optics of this particular purchase all the more difficult to defend.
Anglesey has long been a place where the tension between Welsh-speaking communities trying to hold on to their identity and culture and the pressures of outside money and tourism plays out in real and painful ways. Housing is at the heart of that. When local people cannot afford to live in their own communities, the Welsh language loses speakers, schools lose pupils, and the fabric of village life starts to unravel.
Campaigners who have spent years pushing for tougher action on second homes in Wales reacted to the news with frustration. The argument they have consistently made is that this is not just an abstract economic issue but something that affects real families and real communities every single day.
Pochin has not yet given a detailed public response to the criticism. The purchase itself is not illegal and there is nothing to stop an MP from buying property wherever they choose. But politics is as much about perception as it is about rules, and the timing here makes it very hard to argue that she did not understand exactly what she was doing and what it might look like.
The story lands at a time when second homes remain a genuinely live and contentious issue in Wales, with ongoing debates about whether current measures are working and whether more needs to be done to protect communities like those on Anglesey. It is unlikely to go away quietly.