travel to second homes during the corona virus

What a sad world we live in when neighbours have nothing better to do than snitch/report others for perceived misdemeanours. Where will this end?

We have a holiday home that is usually rented out. In the first lockdown my cleaner (who keeps an eye on the place for me at times like this) asked if her sister, who lives in the same village, could use the cottage to complete an online course as she was struggling to do it with the children at home. I was happy to agree. She'd only been there half an hour when the police were knocking on the door. A neighbour had reported the cottage was occupied. When she explained the situation, they said she could stay, but she was so mortified that she fled!
The same neighbour reported a couple in another cottage who were returning their grandson home to Scotland and stopped off half way at their second home. The police escorted them back to the motorway!
We haven't been up since the beginning of December.

That's kinda what I meant Monica.
If holiday home owners want to start letting their properties say from mid April in the UK they are going to need to spend several weekends in advance getting them ready.
Grass cutting, garden tidying, painting, replacing damaged soft furnishings, employing a plumber, gardener. It can't all be done at the last minute.
I feel sorry for you not being able to get to your holiday home. How frustrating.

kjmpde Yes.

Local southwest news last night had an article from the Devon and Cornwall police.
They've received nearly 3000 calls this lockdown about 2nd homes being occupied. Fines have being given out to those still occupying homes after being given a warning and they are still there. He said, they rely on people ringing in. Last weekend they visited just over 400 2nd homes.

A chance would be a fine thing. We havee a house in Normandy. last year we visited in February, just before lockdown and in the heady COVID relaxation of rules in July.

And thats it. Fortunately we have a lovely Australian lady who runs a grass cutting service and cuts our grass fortnightly from March to octber and offered free house checks in the summer. She is doing them over the winter for a charge so our house is visited and, as she has a key, she walks around indoors as well.

My main worry is the effect a wet winter with no heating at all will have on the house, soft furnishings and clothes. Usually we visit roughly every month or so and in the cold weather, like now, when we come home, we leave the electric towel rails on. They give off just enough heat to keep the place above the dewpoint.

It is not practical or to ask the house visitor to do this, as it requires her to put partial power on and flip lots of switches.

We have a small "home-from-home" that we would normally be visiting for the day, just to check on during the winter.
We can't do that during lockdown obviously. This year, (as in other winters), we make the place as safe & secure as possible. We have a neighbour who passes by each day, as he does for other nearby properties, he has permission to go on & do anything necessary.

Hopefully we will be able to visit in the spring, before the grass is knee high, as it was last year..!!

Rules are there for a reason. Locally 2nd home owner travelled regularly and someone in the village reported the family. Police paid a visit and they were told to leave and given a warning not to try to return.

My brother is working in Chicago, but has kept his house in the UK. He has installed a security system, which monitors all the key points including the thermometer to check the temperature, and the outside. He checks it remotely every day by dialing in from his phone and looking at the cameras. If there is a problem, he contacts a friend who has the key to sort it out. That could be a solution for others with second homes.

We leave a spare key with two sets of neighbours. We email from time to time. Works well for us.
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Lillie I think that you are being a bit premature. I doubt if anybody will be letting their holiday homes in a couple of months. I suppose they might be taking bookings for the summer but they presumably would be doing the opening up shortly before hand.

Didn't Cath Calderwood lose her job for visiting her holiday home.I seem to remember folk on here screaming for HER resignation .Surely the same rule applies to us all .

We have a second home on a small Spanish island. My partner and I got separated at the start of the first lockdown, she in the apartment and me back in the UK. We didn’t get together again till I went out for a month in august. My partner returned to the UK in December and is now quite stuck here. She hates the cold and the UK winter and is desperate to get back to the sun. As she has Spanish residency papers she would be allowed to fly back to the islands but I would not.
It’s a really difficult decision to make as we could end up being separated again for months and months as neither of us would be prepared to do the hotel quarantine thing if it was compulsory coming in from Europe. Neither am I prepared to pay a fortune for a private fit to fly test. The plan was for her to spend the winter away and I would go over for a few weeks when l felt like it. But it hasn’t worked out that way. However what we did learn from last year is that it is very impractical to leave the house in the UK for so long to in the winter and I am still having remedial work done now to sort out the damage of several months neglect in the cold damp of Yorkshire. Additionally my home insurance policy only allows up to 60 days of no one staying overnight. So sadly until international travel becomes more normal again I won’t be able to go to my sunny home.

I don't see anything wrong with travelling to a holiday home to check up on it. Even staying a couple of days.

If holiday home owners are going to be letting their properties to other people in a couple of months time they need to check that everything is in order. Also they need to do any seasonal repairs. It could be counted as "work".

The house belonging to some neighbours suffered some water damage after a freeze. The water had been turned off but he'd forgotten that there is always water left in the bottom of the loo. That expanded and cracked the loo, thus requiring its replacement. I don't understand why people don't turn off the water supply. My OH does it even if we're only going away for a week.

Atqui I think that the rules are being flouted. There is no reason why people should travel backwards and forwards to their second home. Moving to them for the duration is different but if many people did it there would be problems with services.

I live in a rural tourist area in France and here shops base their orders on the numbers of people at different times of the year. The village where I live will see a doubling of its population during holiday periods and the shops cater for that increase accordingly. It's possibly easier here because not many people come out of season. Obviously different in the large cities and along the south coast where there are visitors year round.

I'm renting a terraced cottage, and the second home couple a few doors down were coming and going regularly during lockdown.

A few months ago they received an early morning visit from the Community Police Officer and were told they had to go home. They have left a key with a neighbour and had to return recently due to a tap leaking. Horribly unpleasant as everyone is suspecting the reporter is a neighbour who doesn't speak to them.

Is it the travelling to second homes , or the living in different health authority that’s the problem? I don’t have a second home by the way, but do the same rules apply to adult married children moving in with parents to escape their city flats? That seems to be OK to some but I can’t see that it’s any different from a couple moving to their rural second home?

Not going to ours, the heating is controlled remotely so hopefully no frozen pipes. There’s also cctv, but nothing valuable is left inside. Just have to hope re insurance.
Our neighbours have a key, although there’re at a distance.
The only thing is that we’d just got the jungle of a garden under control after the first lockdown.
However, it’s a first world problem considering what others are through.

kjmpde as others have said there are rules, the virus doesn’t travel, people do. Most sensible people would have a local arrangement in place in case of either an incident when they themselves were on holiday/taken ill/family emergency. If you google it, official advice is to contact your insurer, ‘most are being flexible under the current circumstances regarding policy procedures’.

Perhaps the policies for second homes are worded differently?

It would probably cost less to pay someone to check on your house rather than pay for fuel to-get from, say, London to Torquay.

We need to remember that it is essential travel only. Travelling could put an extra strain on the emergency services, who have enough to do at the moment.
Breakdowns, accidents, or even those little stops on the way to spread the virus.
The rules are quite clear.

Most insurance companies are taking the restrictions into account on that clause in the policy.

Actually I’m not a fan of second homes anyway, when so many people don’t even have one.

But that’s another issue.

I have a relative with a second / holiday home. As another poster said....someone living locally has a key for emergencies and checks.
I believe it's very much an informal set up but has worked well over the years for them.

We have a cottage on Anglesey we were flooded some years ago but we were paid out by the insurance. We have not been to the house for over a year now so we do not know what to expect. We have not taken a chance going there because of police patrols in the area.

In my opinion rules are rules why can't second home owners leave a key with close neighbours to check on their property or a local Estate Agent to do inspections as regard to leaks flooding etc.