I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.
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This week’s offering is about a business I’ve been aware of for some time but have never got around to writing about. Given the raised concerns over the housing crisis in our rural areas I believe the time has come to turn on the spotlight.
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WEST WALES PROPERTY FINDERS
This outfit, and the woman who seems to run it, Carol Peett, appear regularly in my Twitter timeline, or else people draw my attention to the business in other ways. That’s because West Wales Property Finders’ business is seeking out second homes and bucolic retreats for wealthy English buyers.
This is why, given the housing crisis in our rural communities, Mrs Peett and her company piss off so many people.
Which in turn explains why someone sent me a photo of a little piece from this week’s Sunday Times, in which Mrs Peett gleefully announced that, “Coastal Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion have seen a ‘tsunami’ of second-home buyers”.
A strange word to use, ‘tsunami’, and yet, if you think about it, rather apt. For a tsunami is very destructive, and so is the business in which Carol Peett operates.
So who is Mrs Carol Peett?
One of my regular sources of information, Companies House, couldn’t tell me much because there’s no company called West Wales Property Finders (WWPF) registered. Yet the Sunday Times describes Carol Peett as “managing director”. If so, of what?
The only directorship I can find for Carol Elizabeth Poyer Peet is Pembrokeshire Weddings Ltd. Formed in June 2016 and folding in May 2019 without the organist ever striking up Here Comes the Bride.
There may be no company but there is certainly a website for WWPF, where we read that Carol Peett was, “Born and brought up on a farm in Pembrokeshire and with her family being one of the oldest in the County, Carol’s in-depth knowledge of the area, property market and people of West Wales is second to none”.
What pretentious bollocks! Everybody belongs to a very old family, that’s why we’re here today. I have ancestors going back to the Neolithic period, and beyond. If I close my eyes (and take another sip of Malbec) I can see one of these antecedents now, a handsome fellow, clad in well-cut animal skins, blogging for posterity on the walls of his cave.
The claim to being born and brought up on a farm also has a touch of the porky-pies to it. I say that because Carol Peett’s Linkedin profile (here in pdf) says that from 1967 until 1976 she was boarding at private schools in southern England. These were Hanford prep school in Dorset, and the now closed North Foreland Lodge in neighbouring Hampshire.
UPDATE: A comment tells us, “Carol Elizabeth Poyer Lewis born May 1958 in Romsey Hampshire”. Which means she was neither born nor brought up in Pembrokeshire.
Carol Peett (then Lewis) left North Foreland Lodge when she was 18, did not go to university, and worked for many years in England.
The WWPF website brings us up to date with, ” . . . she and Rayner returned to live in Pembrokeshire in 2004″. Though whether hubby, Edward Rayner Peett, had ever previously lived in Pembrokeshire is open to question. And as I’ve said, Carol Peett herself couldn’t have spent much time in Pembrokeshire before returning either.
That year, 2004, is when Carol Peet joined The County Homesearch Company, ” . . . the principal homefinder for Channel 4’s popular TV programme, ‘Location, Location, Location’.” She ran the west Wales office of that company.
The WWPF website tells us that, “With the sale of The County Homesearch Company to American company, Dwellworks, Rayner and Carol felt the time was right to break out on their own and so founded West Wales Property Finders in the Autumn of 2014″.
The problem remains that there seems to be no registered company of that name.
The most recent development according to Linkedin was in August 2018 when Carol Peett became an Associate at Garrington Property Finders. On that company’s website we read that the difference between an estate agent and a property finder is that the former works for the seller whereas Mrs Peett and her ilk work for the buyer.
In the eyes of Garrington Property Finders Scotland is a country unto itself, whereas Wales does not exist. The northern part of our homeland is in north west England, and the southern part in south west England.
Here’s the Garrington website page for the South West Region, where we learn the company has offices in Exeter, Bristol and Winchester. No mention of Clunderwen, though, where dwell the Peetts.
So what is the relationship between Garrington Property Finders and West Wales Property Finders? Mrs Peett claims to be an ‘Associate’ of Garrington. I know what that term means in the Mob, but what does ‘associate’ mean in this context?
Answers on the traditional and now shamefully under-used post card.
As might be expected, Carol and Rayner Peett are loyal members of the Conservative and Unionist Party. And well regarded, I would guess, because for the December 2019 UK election we find their names atop Simon Hart’s nomination paper for the contest in the Carmarthenshire West and South Pembrokeshire constituency. (Available here in pdf.)
That of course is Simon Hart, the Secretary of State for Wales, who is said to have no more than a holiday home in his constituency. Maybe the Peetts found it for him!
The fact that Rayner Peett was the proposer, and Carol Peett the seconder, suggests they are well up in the local Conservative Party pecking order, or else close to Simon Hart. Probably both.
We can all speculate as to whether being pally with the local MP helps their business, but we can be absolutely certain that the association does their business no harm.
A business that is both odious and distasteful, for Carol and Rayner Peett contribute to the destruction of Welsh communities. But they are not alone, there are plenty of others in the same line of business.
My view is that Carol and Rayner Peett are simply being true to their natures, and that the real blame lies elsewhere. With politicians aware of the second home problem and associated issues yet choosing to do nothing, and by their inaction allowing the erasing of our identity.
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If, as I expect, there is a coalition administration after May’s Senedd elections, with Labour and Plaid Cymru simpering about a ‘progressive’ alliance, ‘wicked Tories’, etc., then they will need to act quickly on the rural housing crisis.
We need punitive taxation on second homes, no loopholes, and a maximum 5% of dwellings in any electoral ward allowed to be holiday homes. We also need to clamp down on the other ways in which Wales is exploited, thereby making it clear to all that Wales is no longer a retirement and recreation area for England.
Rather than making gestures about global problems they cannot influence, perhaps the next ‘Welsh Government’ can focus a little closer to home, stick to the day job by tackling the problems faced by Welsh people and Welsh communities.
There is a storm brewing, and this is inevitable. Because when any nation is being invaded, and overwhelmed, its identity threatened; when people are turned into strangers in their own communities, or expelled from those communities, then resentment will grow.
And if the people’s elected representatives are perceived to be complicit in this tragedy or unconcerned, unwilling for whatever reason to respond, then there will come a reaction from within the people.
The next ‘Welsh Government’ should recognise this. And also recognise that continuing to fail the Welsh people is no longer an option.
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Tribute to Jac … from Plaid of all people !
https://nation.cymru/news/price-calls-for-an-end-to-extractive-tourism-and-says-industry-must-work-for-wales-communities/
Shame that the stupid twat took so long to recognise the value of Jac’s contributions. If he really wants thought leadership on any of the major issues ( as opposed to ishoos) relating to our future as a nation he should look to Jac’s work more often. The output makes others, who call themselves the professional commentariat , look feeble and irrelevant.
It’s comforting to hear things I’ve been saying for decades now being said by political parties. My worry is that it may be too late, certainly for some areas.
I can remember Abergele as a town where you’d hear Welsh spoken on the street and in the pubs. Now it’s part of the Merseyside Riviera. And the same could be said for other communities along the north coast. A crystal ball was not needed to see the future, all you had to do was look at the changes of the recent past and realise that this is what tourism does to Wales.
And that was because tourism in Wales was not developed for the benefit of Wales but for the convenience of England. ‘Wales, England’s playground’. That is the fundamental problem. We now need to turn things around to give us a tourism industry that benefits us without causing social, cultural and environmental damage.
If that can’t be done, then we’ll do without tourism altogether. Taking that drastic step will still result in benefits for Wales and Welsh people that outweigh the disadvantages because so few Welsh people benefit from tourism, while most experience the downside in some shape or form.
Being not so “tourist friendly” might help in the long term. I don’t mean that B&B owners or any other kind of proprietor should turn into Basil Fawlty clones, but people who live and work in areas blighted by tourism should adopt a more assertive attitude. Saw a story within the last 24 hours or so of sheep been killed by pet dogs :
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/other/snowdonia-farmers-on-high-alert-as-pandemic-puppies-head-for-the-hills-for-first-time/ar-BB1fhA5u?ocid=msedgntp
Quite frankly shooting the dog would NOT suffice. Giving the owner a short range blast from a Remington 12 gauge ( of which there are a few in North Wales !) might send out a well defined message like “clean your act up you tossers”. Why visitors think it’s in any way funny to let pets molest livestock is beyond me. There again it replicates the Anglos’ attitudes towards the Welsh in general.
The pandemic of “victim identity” has penetrated so far into the minds of young people here in Wales, also elsewhere, that any lack of success now has to be attributed to a “deep prejudice” either at individual, racial or institutional level. Lack, or relative lack, of appropriate attributes no longer counts.
Reading that BBC report about poor old Ms Phiri, I got to the bit about the even more downtrodden Constantino, an academic who is hard done by because the local academic sewers were more focussed on class and gender and had no real interest in researching racism. He’s now gone to work at the University of York, where he now researches and teaches on issues of race and ethnicity, despite still living in Cardiff. Sad really because the whole choice he ventures to mention – class, gender and race – are overdone in any case, occupied by third rate academic dilettantes too dim to engage in some original work which would add value to our society. Try researching poverty, which cuts across the three areas he mentions as well as areas of interest like employment opportunities and access to real vocational training. He might eventually stumble across our bloated Third Sector, whose lofty aims include solving many of these problems but in reality feed off them as a means of propagating their own existence. He might indeed stumble across our esteemed “government” and its attendant Bay bubble who talk big about creating job opportunities and long term career prospects which often turn out to be short term or seasonal contracts, on part time or zero hour terms.
That is the crappy situation that renders “mobility” an unattainable pipe dream for that under class with which academics toy while trotting out yet more useless garbage. That is what stifles any hopes that people of diverse ethnic origins have of “progress” and makes any hope of gender equality a matter likely to be achieved by pricing everybody, men and women, down to the lowest common denominator.
Of course our universities won’t want to examine any of this too closely as they are all very cosy with the regime that doles out the loot and academia will almost always shun the opportunity to bite the hand that feeds it. Think tanks too are cut from similar cloth, so maybe our 2 disenchanted academics will be better off staying out of the Welsh sewer unless they are minded to drain it and put some real effort into presenting a warts and all analysis of our present predicament.
According to nation.cymru Leanne is at it again with her usual lazy use of language. “Ooh, that bloke is far right, ychafi ” or words to that effect. Who is she to judge what’s far right, left or anything else, when recent evidence suggests that she is quite cosy in the company of Islamofascists who prance around happy to hack the heads off innocent people ?. This kind of stance should direct patriots to vote for Gwlad or Propel. A vote for independence but also a vote to eliminate the shitty stench that is now engulfing that Party as it sinks into irrelevance.
I am more than ever convinced that the real Nazi/Fascist intolerant scum are found among the empty headed “thought leaders” of Plaid Cymru. McEvoy should be glad by now that they engineered him out as to remain a member would have tainted him in a far more damning way.
As for the Abolitionists, well they are a bunch of fantasists that have realised that the abysmal performance of the Cynulliad/Senedd to date provided ample ammunition for those who would seek to accelerate our assimilation into Greater England. That is a dud too but it’s consistently churning out the same line of crap whereas our luvvies in Plaid are hopping around trying to please some notional benchmark designed by nouveau liberal “lefties” whose links to real socialist ideals are tenuous to say the least. Neither offers much that is genuinely productive.
Perhaps we could organise an event where the Plaid dim wits and the Abolitionist fantasists could be locked in until they exterminated each other, thus leaving the political landscape cleansed for a more intelligent debate about our priorities.
Does that make me an anti Fascist fascist, or an anti-pseudo leftie socialist ?
… and speaking of Fascists, which we do from time to time, I see that yet another little retarded Fashit, Aled, has been out there shooting it off again. He needs to refrain from referring to anyone as “piss soaked” as he is known to be at best half soaked and dtinks of shit most of the time. Some of these fuckers just have no sense of hygiene at all.
Charles McDowell property consultants is an exclusive agent acting for discreet acquisition of property for discerning clients. They are based in Knightsbridge, London, stones throw from Harrods. This is their website.
http://www.mcdowellproperties.co.uk/home.html
According to the register of MPs interests in Westminster, on 1st March 2021, Charles McDowell Property made a donation of £2000 cash to a conservative MP. None other than Virginia Crosbie the MP for Ynys Môn.
There was a tweet going around a few days ago – which I can’t find – asking about a strange payment, possibly £1200, to Trearddur Bay Cottages(?), payment made on Home Office card. Must try to find that tweet, there may be a connection.
It was £1890 spent on 24/11/2020 using the Pritti Patel Amex card of the Home secretary with the merchant description of Trearddur Bay Holiday. Source data here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-procurement-card-spend-over-500-2020
This was in the middle of the Wales Fire Break Covid lockdown. Unlikely to be Pritti Patel herself, but her ministerial staff using the bosses credit card.
Probably the Allouette (MI5 nickname for a dark horse). This is the posh lady with long face and big teeth who works as a fixer and reporting directly to the Home Secretary. When there’s a cock-up she arrives with credit cards. Previous examples include underpants from Primark in Folkestone for asylum seekers shipped to immigration hearings without underwear and PPE from a cosmetics firm in Oxford when MPs turned up for an AstraZenica briefing without facemasks. The cost and proximity to Holyhead Port suggest that Allouette flashed her Amex card to fix something. You could ask them for a statement. I doubt she would be so stupid to book a Jake Berry holiday cottage. Would they?
….” Posh lady with long face and big teeth…” sounds like something out of panto, might even be the front end of the horse ! As for that payment, even though the recipient might be Trearddur Bay Holiday it might not mean that represents accurately the goods or services provided. The name may be used as a blind for some payment which the Home Secretary or her staff prefer to keep unidentified.
If it refers to Trearddur Bay Holiday Cottages, then this is just an agency that promotes privately-owned houses and cottages. So, the question then becomes, who owns the property or properties to which the payment refers?
One property being advertised by Trearddur Bay Holiday Cottages is Cerrig, Rhoscolyn. This I know is owned by Jake Berry MP, possibly with other members of his family. (That certainly was the case.)
Yes. That would appear as described in the merchant ID of the transaction.
Feral juveniles of Tunisian nationality, unmasked as not being Syrian, those of illegal immigration status, often play the system. Claiming family in Ireland is common. Those rejected at the border they cease to be the responsibility of Serco, the delivery contractors, who have their own arrangements. These children usually fall under the wing of the social services department of the local authority, who also have their own arrangements.
For some reason, it appears that Allouette flashed the Patel credit card. The question arises, not why, but how the accommodation was booked. A google coincidence, or pals over a bottle of Chardonnay with Jake Berry MP?
Why do you suspect that scenario?
Because the big ticket transactions on the downloaded dataset relates to accommodation businesses of close proximity to ferry ports. Adults can be arrested by police. Unaccompanied juveniles need accommodating and if social services don’t provide, the HO has to do the deed as an emergency purchase. The alternative explanation is that this booking was for genuine holiday accommodation, identifying two criminal offences, unauthorised personation (financial) and Covid breach (lockdown). Now that would be a significant event if an MPs property is used as Pritti Patel, the home secretary herself, is responsible for the credit card.
Back to your post – spot on, Jac. Skewered them as ever!
Reverting to the property topic, the runaway price hikes could be controlled for main homes if there was a capital gains tax on sales within (say) 7 years of purchase.
As for holiday/second homes; if the local authorities are so stupid that they allow nil council tax on these properties when registered as a business available for 140 days letting, it’s their own fault. I believe this is now being stopped after the last budget.
Capital gains tax (CGT) applies to sale of second homes anyway. If you are wealthy enough to have a 2nd home then you can pay up. In any case CGT rates on property are already higher than on shares and gains on other items.
A survey in Cornwall found that 29% of second/holiday homes were owned by locals and left empty over winter months, so it’s not all down to outsiders coming in.
I doubt that the Welsh ownership is very different. Has there ever been a survey?
Around us there are any number of old cowsheds now transformed into dinky little lets, with a max 1 month occupancy per let. Other holiday homes only get permission for a 10 -11 month occupancy which means they cannot ever be sold for a family to use as a main home.
There’s a lack of joined up thinking here.
I agree entirely entirely. We need a comprehensive review of housing in Wales. It must also look at the supply of social rented housing, which housing associations – despite being publicly funded – are no longer providing.
Off Topic.I see that clown in Cardiff is blaming people for not turning up for their jab.
Perhaps because they are now tasked to do those of working age.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56575733
I got a letter saying book a jab my GP surgery in Cydweli and when I tried to book it they said they didn’t have any vaccine left and “try next week”.
Every so often I get to cross paths with some colleagues in a railway depot mess room. There’s a Scotsman, and Englishman and a Welshman. This is no joke. The Scotsman has already had a jab in Glasgow as key workers get priority there. The Englishman gets to use an online booking system to slot in a jab between shifts, at any convenient stop on route. Jab done. The Welshman passes Swansea but is not allowed to attend the mass vaccination centre where vaccine flows unused and gets a letter from the GP surgery, so tries to book as instructed he cannot get one, as they’ve run out.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/
England Only.
Why does England allow those invited to make bookings online, so they get maximum attendance, but Wales forces people wither to miss out, awarded an appointment they cannot keep, or wangle time off work? The chances are the appointments missed in Swansea is because they can’t attend rather than not wanting it.
Utter shambles.
UPDATE. Problem now solved. For those who’ve received the call up letter and live in Hywel Dda UHB area and are being been mucked about by the GP, just send a vaccine request email with DoB and NHS number.
COVIDenquiries.hdd@wales.nhs.uk
They are spot on and very efficient, which leads me to assume your GP surgery is not the best venue if you drive and work shifts. Sadly there is no online booking facility in Wales, but they do phone you back and slot you in straight away at a mass vaccination centre. Had my first jab this afternoon at the Carmarthen showground. They said they have negligible no-shows.
Meanwhile inside the bubble, Mr Price trots out his well exercised line about Green Deals, low carbon industries etc etc. Nothing is said about his party’s ill judged support for forests of turbines which have destroyed much of Wales natural capacity for flood prevention. Bogs, woodlands and other features that had done a good job of slowing flows of rainwater have been torn away to accommodate grant grabbing and money making machines for international corporates. More lies and hiding from harsh truths.
From the Pembrokeshire Herald 26 October 2020, after Simon Hart voted against free school meals
However, Mr Hart will be pleased to have had support echoing his point on free school meals from Carol Peett, the wife of his constituency chairman, Rayner Peett.
Mrs Peett posted the following on Facebook: “All this Marcus Rashford rubbish – momentum scam to try & destabilise the government using a thick footballer’s name as a frontman – the Government had already given money to councils to make sure these children are fed so totally pointless.
I don’t pay much attention to the opinions of footballers, but even so, that’s going a bit far. She sounds like a nasty bit of work. Just the kind of person I’d expect to be finding holiday homes for rich English people.
I’ve also picked up from Ancestry
Edward Rayner Peett born June 1963 in Sittingbourne Kent
married 2004 to
Carol Elizabeth Poyer Lewis born May 1958 in Romsey Hampshire
not exactly ‘from Narberth’ as she claims on her Facebook page
She is listed in her maiden name at Company House a failed hairdressing business..
What was the name of the failed company?
Rayner Peett is the chairman of the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Conservative Association. His wife is Carol Peett.
Here is their website.
https://pembrokeshirefarmbandb.co.uk/about-us/
They say the house in Pembrokeshire they inherited is shared with three Labradors called Snipe and Plover and with Juniper, who, along with their three donkeys and a one legged one eyed chicken which came with the house.
Explains the nomination for Simon Hart MP, our viceroy.
What is it with these people and the donkeys?
“Stands in” for the husband when he’s away, or tired.
Poor buggers!
Unhappy Donkey Hill…
Probably because to keep horses requires knowledge and skill as well as good exercise routine. With a donkey you just need to get a local skives to throw a bail of hay over the fence and it provides an opportunity to impress the visitors for a petting session using a carrot. Their latin name is africanus africanus, native to hot deserts. They must get quite miserable in the winter rain of west Wales. A bit like the rottweiler and tracksuit, only in this case, the green welly and donkey brigade. Same mentality.