A report prepared for Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet said that proposals to crack down on holiday lets by introducing stricter planning rules would need to be justified.
Suggestions include adding clauses to leases for new homes and conversions to prevent them from being used as short-term lets and a proposal to include “zones” where they would be permitted in planning policies.
The report said that more evidence gathering was necessary to justify either of these proposals.
It said: “It would be beyond the remit of planning to require clauses are added to a lease for new builds and conversions to restrict use as full-time short-term lets.
“However, if a new policy could be included in the City Plan, a condition or … agreement could be attached to the planning decision, restricting the use as short-term lets.”
The cabinet is due to consider 12 recommendations from a report by the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
The cabinet is being advised to lobby the government for a new planning class for short-term lets and for a licensing scheme requiring registration as a business, with the correct arrangements for tax, business rates, parking, insurance and waste management,
The council has put itself forward for a potential pilot project to register properties used as short-term lets, often just known as Airbnbs, before any government decision to introduce such a scheme.
The report to the council’s cabinet said: “As a council, we are committed to developing a flourishing and inclusive local economy that is a distinctive place for people to visit.
“Alongside this, we want to be a fair and inclusive city for residents where everyone has access to decent quality affordable housing.
“As a tourist destination, short-term lets have been a feature for many years and in many areas.
“We want to take a balanced approach to this complex and important issue that both supports our tourist and visitor economy and prevents negative impacts to the city’s housing supply.”
It is not clear how many homes are used as short-term lets in Brighton and Hove but the figure is believed to be between 2,000 and 6,000.
The Economic Impact of Tourism, a study in 2023, estimated that there were four million overnight stays in Brighton and Hove across the year – or about 11,000 a night.
Short-term lets are popular with families for offering greater flexibility than hotels and were often cheaper because they usually had lower overheads.
Almost 450 operators have registered to pay business rates. Properties used as commercial premises should pay for commercial waste collection. Many short-term lets do not.
The council’s rubbish and recycling service has said that short-term lets tend to produce more rubbish and recycling than conventional family homes, with visitors putting their waste out on the wrong days.
The cabinet is due to meet at 2pm on Thursday 26 June at Hove Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast.
This feels like another aspect that could be made easier potentially through devolution. Depending on the details, at the very least.
Regulation of these in several cities has only served to drive it underground reducing tax income, quality and safety. Now watch our council do the same.
Regulation isn’t likely to “make things worse”. On the contrary, it’s the clearest path toward restoring housing stock, ensuring safety, improving neighbourhood relations, and supporting the legitimate STL economy, and can be seen working in many cities, such as Blackpool.
We know a lack of regulation doesn’t work.
It is a pity the largest landlord in the city, (BHCC), have been proven to ignore basic safety legislation in vast swathes of their rental properties. It is abundantly clear that they should firstly look inwards rather than outwards if they are serious about improving standards.
That’s a classic tu quoque. BHCC are investing £50 m+ in repairs, completing new structural and fire-risk assessments and working with the fire service to implement safety measures.
That doesn’t stop the need for Airbnb regulation. Whataboutism is a poor argument, Atti.
BHCC are only ‘investing £50m’ (I thought it was £15m) in social housing due to the damning report from the regulator of social housing highlighting multiple failures and unacceptable backlogs. Keeping up to date with standards and regulations is not ‘investing’ and should not be spun as such – they are basic legal requirements.
That does nothing to counter my stance though. It’s still whataboutism.
How about starting by making them follow the safety regulations that guesthouses and hotels have to follow. Too many air bnb’s don’t have wired smoke detectors instead relying on one or two battery ones, and don’t test electrical or gas appliances and boilers regularly.
Good idea in priciple. And how about BHCC complying with the basic legislative safety requirements for their own rented properties prior to imposing it on private landlords? They are, after all, the largest landlord in the city.
Genuine question for you, Atticus, why does it have to be one or the other? Why not both, at the same time?
This is an example of how institutions can’t really deal with change, and how they get stuck in bubble thinking – where the same people who work in a tight-knit office, with long-term working relationships, have to deal with something which is basically new and outside their understanding. They only do what they know.
This weekend, for the summer solstice, I’ll be camping somewhere on the South Downs, and several others on that same camp site will be those who have let out their Brighton flats for the weekend. The modest money they make will help pay for their ever-rising domestic bills this month – plus camping in summer is fun, so they get a break from home.
There will be officers at the council having meetings to discuss this ‘problem’ of AirB’n’Bs. They will talk about ‘party houses’, possible noise, but they will worry more that the council isn’t getting a cut of the rental.
The theory is also that AirB’n’B rentals take homes away from locals or poorer workers – when in fact that is the world we live in now, and the council really need to catch up. Younger people are moving away, or else making do in the short term by sharing in slum landlord bedsits.
Note too, that AirB’n’B properties already have to declare their income to the tax authorities. It’s already a regulated business and, from what I hear, not an easy one. (My own flat would need a lot of de-cluttering or stripping out, if I were to let a room or the whole place for the weekend. No thanks. )
This is the same institutional issue as when the council reorganises our roads, but don’t anticipate the changing use of vehicles. In a city like ours, as an example, we need to legalise electric scooters and bikes that travel faster than 15mph (because that’s what people are buying and using) , and any new ‘cycle lanes’ should actually be for those vehicles.
There are so many boxes our beloved institutions can’t think outside of, and such is the slow nature of progressive change.
Joining with neighbouring councils, as has been proposed – which the hope of economies of scale – certainly won’t help in allowing the juggernaut of bubble thinking to adapt to new times.
And of course the NHS is in exactly the same position, stuck in its own slow-moving bureaucracy.
I feel that’s just normative fatalism, and a false equivalence.
You make a fair point that institutions often struggle to keep up with change. But STLs aren’t just a new trend; they’re having a very real impact on housing supply, school numbers, waste management, and neighbourhood cohesion. This can be evidenced globally.
There should be a level playing field. If a hotel or HMO has to follow safety rules, so should an STL. Regulation isn’t always about blocking progress; sometimes it’s what allows cities to adapt responsibly.
Progress without safeguards isn’t freedom — it’s just deregulation dressed up as inevitability.