Edinburgh Consults on Making the Whole City a Short-Term Let Control Area

On 2 September 2021, the date recorded on its consultation page, the City of Edinburgh Council opened a public consultation on a proposal to designate its entire area a short-term let control area. Inside a control area, an owner letting out a residential property that was not their principal home on a short-term basis would have to apply for planning approval for a change of use. The closing date was 5 November 2021.

It was a proposal, out for comment. The council said the plan did not mean a blanket ban on short-term lets, that the decision to designate would be its own, and that a designation would then need the approval of Scottish Ministers. Its news release announcing the consultation gave the start as Friday 3 September and the length as nine weeks.

What the council proposed

The consultation page said that in April 2021 the government introduced laws allowing councils in Scotland to designate all or part of their area as a short-term let control area, with the approval of the Scottish Government. On 11 August 2021 Edinburgh's Planning Committee approved asking people whether the whole council area should be one.

The council's FAQ, published with the consultation, divided short-term lets into three kinds:

• Home sharing: letting private or shared rooms in the host's only or principal home.
• Home letting: letting the whole of that home while the host was absent.
• Secondary letting: letting a property where the host or operator did not normally live, such as a second home.

The FAQ said the control area affected only secondary letting. An owner in that position would need planning permission, and an existing operator would need it to continue, unless they could show the property had been used as a short-term let for more than 10 years without previous enforcement action.

The Statement of Reasons, dated August 2021, set out the guidance the council applied to such applications. It would not normally grant planning permission for flats, the local word for apartments, where it judged the potential harm to neighbors' amenity greatest. A change of use in a flat would generally be acceptable only where there was private access from the street.

The FAQ said it was likely that a control area could come into force in April 2022, subject to the consultation and to Ministers' approval.

Why the council wanted it

The council's case was about housing and neighbors. Its Statement of Reasons said 31% of all Airbnb listings in Scotland in 2019 were in the city of Edinburgh, against 19% in Highland and 7% in Glasgow City. Its background report counted 7,698 entire properties and 4,496 rooms advertised on Airbnb in Edinburgh at March 2020, and credited its charts to Inside Airbnb.

• Concentration. The report put the rate of Airbnb-listed lets to dwellings at 18.5% in the City Centre ward in 2020 and 10% in Leith Walk. It said the majority of the city's short-term lets were in tenement properties.
• Spread. Two thirds of the lets were outside the City Centre and Leith wards, the council said, and they were evident in every ward. It gave that as a reason for covering the whole city.
• Housing. Research the council commissioned from Rettie & Co in 2018 estimated that around 10% of private rented homes had been lost to short-term lets.
• Enforcement. The council said 511 planning enforcement cases had been raised against short-term lets in five years, each requiring it to establish whether a material change of use had taken place. The committee report said designating the whole council area would provide clarity on the need for planning permission.

Councillor Neil Gardiner, the council's Planning Convener, said in the news release that Edinburgh had almost a third of all short-term lets in Scotland. The council's papers measured Airbnb listings. Of short-term lets, he said: “They’re putting pressure on house prices and rents and taking houses out of supply as well as causing issues such as anti-social behaviour and the hollowing out of communities.”

How it tied to licensing

The control area was one of two sets of rules in prospect for Edinburgh's hosts. The other was a national licensing scheme. The council's papers said the legislation for it was not passed before the parliamentary term ended in April 2021, and that the Scottish Government consulted again from 25 June to 13 August 2021. If the proposed legislation passed, all short-term lets in Scotland, of any type, would need to be licensed by 1 April 2024. A host in a control area whose let needed planning permission would have to hold it, or have applied for it, as a mandatory condition of a license.

On 7 September 2021 the Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers said in a briefing that the Scottish Government's Programme for Government for 2021-22 made no mention of short-term let regulation, and that the government had previously announced that the laying of its licensing regulations before parliament would be delayed until November 2021.

What the trade said

The Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers, a trade body for self-catering operators, answered in a statement dated 3 September 2021. Fiona Campbell, its chief executive, said: “Edinburgh Council’s draft proposals for a short-term let control area covering the entire city are wholly disproportionate and lack an empirical evidence base to substantiate claims that such accommodation has reduced housing stock.”

Campbell said the proposals appeared to rely on pre-pandemic listings from one online platform, and that self-catering generated £70 million for Edinburgh's economy. She argued that the failure lay elsewhere, in too few affordable homes built and too few empty properties brought back into use.

The council's background report had acknowledged limits in its data. It said the precise scale of short-term letting in the city was unknown, because there was no requirement to register such a property with the council, though it added that the Airbnb figures might be a conservative estimate. Its table of rates put the City Centre ward at 18.5% in 2020 and 10.3% in 2021, and the Colinton/Fairmilehead ward at 1.3% in 2020.

ShortTermRentalz reported the launch on 6 September 2021. None of the documents and reports cited here carries a response from Airbnb or any other platform.

What it meant for hosts

For a host in Edinburgh in September 2021, no rule had changed. The work was to find out which side of the line a property fell on, and to answer the consultation before it closed on 5 November.

• Letting a room in your own home, or your whole home while you were away, was outside the proposal. The FAQ said the same went for letting your home during the festival, provided it remained your only or principal home.
• Letting a property you did not normally live in was inside it. If the control area was designated, you would need planning permission, or evidence of more than 10 years of short-term letting without previous enforcement action.
• A flat without its own street door faced the hardest test. The guidance said permission would not normally be granted for flats, and that a change of use would generally be acceptable only with private access from the street.
• The date to plan around was April 2022, when the FAQ said a control area could come into force.
• Licensing ran on a separate clock: 1 April 2024 for every short-term let in Scotland if the proposed legislation passed, with planning status a license condition inside a control area.

Sources

1. City of Edinburgh Council, Short-Term Let Control Area (consultation page) (2 September 2021).
2. City of Edinburgh Council (news release, Wayback Machine capture of 7 September 2021), Have your say on short term lets (1 September 2021).
3. City of Edinburgh Council, Short-term-let Control area: Frequently Asked Questions (consultation document; undated, the same file is in the Wayback Machine's capture of 3 September 2021) (September 2021).
4. City of Edinburgh Council, Short-term let control area for Edinburgh: Statement of Reasons (August 2021).
5. City of Edinburgh Council, Planning Committee, Short-Term Let Area of Control (report to the Planning Committee of 11 August 2021, with the background report as Appendix 2) (11 August 2021).
6. Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers, Edinburgh Council Launch Short-Term Let Control Area Consultation (3 September 2021).
7. Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers, Briefing: The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government, 2021-22 (7 September 2021).
8. ShortTermRentalz, Edinburgh launches short-let control area consultation (6 September 2021).