As the holiday season draws to a close, people across Cornwall are counting the benefits and costs.

For many Cornish businesses, the profits of the summer make it possible to survive through another winter (albeit with reduced staffing levels). Some students are happy to leave their summer jobs and head back to university for another year. But for anyone needing a year-round job, this is a time of great uncertainty: “Will I be laid off for the winter?

Care providers will be hoping that the staff who left them for better-paid work over the summer will come back. GPs and hospitals will be trying to get back to “business as usual” after caring for hundreds of visitors.

Some homeowners are returning from long holidays funded by renting out their houses on Airbnb. Others have spent the summer living in a relative’s spare room, or even camping in a friend’s garden because renting out their home over the summer was the only way to pay the mortgage.

For some people, the end of the holiday season simply means being able to drive across town without getting stuck in a traffic jam!

For good or ill, tourism affects every member of our community, but the powers to control it are held in London, not Cornwall.

The Liberal Democrats have clear policies to allow places like Cornwall to control the impact of tourism, but will the Labour give us the tools we need?

After years of Liberal Democrat campaigns, the outgoing Conservative government made some concessions, but each of them had a loophole which our new Labour government must fix:

Second homes will soon have to pay double Council Tax, but will Labour allow Cornwall Council to spend the extra revenue building affordable homes, or will they simply reduce our central government funding by the same amount?

The Conservatives told us that from “this summer” a new planning category would be created for holiday rentals, but they’ve written the policy to make it almost impossible for a council to block such a change of use. Labour should flip this around to put the onus on the applicant to prove that another holiday property wouldn’t be harmful to a community.

Last October, the Conservative government made it a legal requirement for all holiday rental properties to be registered with their local council. Ten months later, the government still hasn’t told councils what the scheme should cover.

The Welsh and Scottish governments are planning to allow councils to charge “tourism taxes”. I believe Cornwall Council should get that power too.

If the new Labour government really cares about Cornwall, it must give us the tools we need to manage tourism.

Colin Martin

Liberal Democrat group leader and Cornwall councillor for Lostwithiel and Lanreath