Seeking a balance between holiday homes and tackling a housing shortage

There have always been holiday apartments in our city by the sea, alongside the more traditional hotels and guest houses.

But the exponential rise in their numbers in recent years – largely since the advent of booking platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com – has led short-term lets to become a somewhat vexed and thorny issue locally and nationally.

So, when Brighton and Hove City Council switched to a cabinet system of local governance just under a year ago and set up two new scrutiny committees to provide oversight of policy and decision-making in the executive, it seemed like a good subject to pick for our first “deep dive” topic.

We set up a task-and-finish group to look into the benefits and pitfalls of this still-expanding sector, looking at ways to help the city manage it as effectively as possible.

It’s not an easy line to walk. Our vibrant city with its sparky, diverse population punches well above its weight financially with thousands of creative micro-businesses and tech companies, a hugely successful football club embedded in the community and a brilliant retail, hospitality, events and entertainment offer.

All this also combines to give us a thriving tourist economy that is the envy of many other seaside destinations.

And it gives rise to numerous business conversations about how we can keep growing the number of beds available and therefore of visitors who stay for a night, a weekend or a week, rather than just coming for a daytrip.

However, we’re also a city with a deep-rooted housing crisis and pockets of serious deprivation, problems worsened by the shortage of property to rent or buy, and consequent sky-high prices of what is available.

The huge rise in the number of properties previously used as homes (rented or owned) that have been turned over to short-term letting use clearly affects that crisis and our communities, particularly in some concentrated areas.

And it’s hard to quantify the effects clearly since we have so little agreed data and not much regulatory power.

Our task was to come up with recommendations that would help all of us who live here while not harming the visitor economy that so many jobs and businesses depend on.

We looked at the work being done by two government departments and spoke to civil servants and MP Rachael Maskell about her private member’s bill, aimed at giving local areas more power.

We talked to residents, councillors, trade bodies, reps from booking platforms and traditional hotels.

We talked to police, fire, waste service representatives and planning officers from our own and other councils about how to advise owners who may be unaware of current legislation that they may be breaching.

In short, we talked to everyone we could with expertise in this field and it was highly educational.

Now we’re set to debate our conclusions at the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday (25 March) and hopefully recommend actions to cabinet.