1.1 Please confirm that full legal advice has been taken on all the legal aspects of the second home premium. 1.2 Please also confirm that Councillors have fully followed the advice given to them by the lawyers. We have requested clarity of the legal advice on more than one occasion and are concerned that you do not appear to be able or willing to give a straight answer. 1.3 You state that the 'legitimate expectations' referred to by the lawyers is in respect of the Council's duty to be open and transparent on how the money raised is spent. We do not know which report you are referring to, but this is certainly not how the advice / papers / minutes read and we ask you to reconfirm with the lawyers exactly what they were referring to. Can you please ask them to make a statement which can be forwarded to us to clarify the position. 2 Please provide us with a copy of the paper in the consultation exercise sent to second home owners that clearly stated 75% of the then second home premium was being diverted to the general fund. We have reviewed the information we responded to and have not been able to trace this statement. You state that the monies collected are still being used for affordable housing and enhancing communities and only the percentage allocation has changed. This fails to address the point that the monies collected from the second home premiums are being diverted to the general fund. You have failed to answer this question. When the charge was originally introduced it was ring fenced and its use could be clearly identified. Currently 85% of the funds collected are diverted to the general fund and as we stated in our earlier communication we have been unable to determine exactly what the money is being spent on. This is a significant change and we look forward to seeing the statement which dealt with this variation which you stated was included in the consultation exercise with second home owners. From your explanation, we wonder if you did not communicate this change to second home owners and simply made the information available to members? 3.1 Please confirm that the accounts you are currently preparing to include the allocation of the second home premium and shown on your website will not simply state ' the premiums have been used to fund affordable housing and enhancing communities', but will be a detailed and open record of the transactions. In order to be transparent as required, you need to include the amount you have actually collected and spent on the various projects. We will await this information with interest. 3.2 Please state who made the recommendation for the change of accounting to divert monies to the general fund and why. 3.3 Please also confirm whether consideration was given to continue using the second home premium account for the monies collected and usage, and if not, why not? 4 You state that your colleagues confirmed that there had been a substantial increase in households in temporary accommodation when numbers are compared in 2020 and 2022. However, in the minutes from summer last year (2023) the Head of Housing and Public Protection stated that she was seeing a plateau if not a slight decline…' We suggest the later statement is more up to date and would ask that you provide us with the most up to date figures in order to clarify exactly what the current position is and how much money (in £s) is earmarked to fund this requirement. 5 You state that Cabinet at their meeting on 13 February 2023 identified a number of priority areas. 5.1 Please confirm that these matters have not been addressed at a more recent meeting. We certainly would have thought such an important matter would have been considered further in the last 12 months, particularly as it has been given as one of the reasons for increasing the level of the second home premium. 5.2 Please state how much money (in £s) has been allocated to the 5 areas you detailed from the second home premium in 2023/24 and 2024/25. 5.3 The five areas noted do not specify exactly how many 'affordable homes' and 'social housing units' are required. What are the numbers? 5.4.1 Please state exactly what the target acquisition/build is for each of these groups in 2024/25. 6.1 Why have you failed to answer the question about the delay renting the affordable homes in the Sandbanks Development? We are aware that the Council did not acquire the properties until December 2023. What we do not understand is how the developer was allowed to stall their occupation for so many years. Please explain how this was allowed to occur. 6.2 Please confirm the actions the Council are taking to ensure this does not happen again with future developments. 7 You state that the council have deferred their decision on the discretion to exercise their discount policy for second home premiums in respect of the 182 days. 7.1 Please confirm that the Council are not exercising any discretionary discounts to any long term empty and second homes premiums, irrespective of the 182 day requirement, for 2023/24 and 2024/25, or if they are, on what basis? 8 You confirm in your e mail that you do not have detailed information about second homes simply numbers and have not responded to our question on how the Council have taken an informed decision. 8.1 Please clearly set out exactly what information, (including financial information) the council used to influence their decision to increase the second home premium to 200%. 8.2 Please ask Councillors in meeting to set out what matters they have used to influence their decision on this point and confirm they are confident they fulfilled their fiduciary responsibilities. No doubt you will be able to let us have a copy of the minute recording this point. 9 You state that second homes impact the funding from the Welsh Government and that they calculate the amount using (significantly) population statistics. 9.1 Please state how the population statistics are calculated and what year they are based on. 9.2 Please can you clarify how much is received from the Welsh Government per head or per property ie how much money does Pembrokeshire fail to receive because of the number of second homes in the county? We have tried to make these questions very specific as we do not seem to be able to obtain the answers we need with general requests. We really do not want to play email ping pong with you, but we do want the facts, not generalised statements that do not really tell us anything. If our requests are a problem, please tell us what format you require them in. We know that formal requests can be made to the council, but we did not want to clog up the system with the details we require. If we need to formally request this information via a council meeting, please let us know.