Holiday home owners face seeking approval to let them out
2 min read
Second-home owners will be forced to seek planning permission to start renting out their properties as holiday lets, under plans to reduce housing pressure in tourist hotspots.
Michael Gove, the housing secretary, will announce today that ministers intend to alter planning laws by the end of the year to give councils the power to ban future holiday lets if their local area does not have enough affordable housing to rent or buy.
At the same time the government is opening a consultation on creating a new mandatory registration scheme for holiday lets that would allow councils, for the first time, to see how much local housing stock is taken up by temporary lets. The move is designed to appease concerns among residents in holiday hotspots such as Cornwall, the Lake District, Norfolk and even parts of London that new housing is being bought up speculatively to make money from private rentals through platforms such as Airbnb.
Announcing the changes, Gove said that while tourism provided a lot of benefits to the economy, he was concerned that local people were being “pushed out” of communities because landlords could make more money through short-term lets.
“I’m determined that we ensure that more people have access to local homes at affordable prices, and that we prioritise families desperate to rent or buy a home of their own close to where they work,” he said. “Tourism brings many benefits to our economy but in too many communities we have seen local people pushed out of cherished towns, cities and villages by huge numbers of short-term lets.”
The move follows a concerted campaign by Tory MPs who demanded the changes among concessions on planning made in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. In a consultation to be published today the government is expected to point to figures showing that in places such as Cornwall short-term listings had increased six-fold in five years.
Other research shows that since 2014, there has been a 571 per cent increase…
Business Matters
2023-04-13 03:43:00
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