Second-Home Owners Will Need Planning Permission for Short-Term Holiday Lets

The morning sun illuminates properties in the popular seaside resort of St Ives, in Cornwall, England on April 14, 2016. Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Second-home owners will need to apply for planning permission to rent their properties as short-term lets, in measures the government hopes will protect locals from being pushed out of their communities.

On Monday, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities revealed proposals which would see a new planning “use class” created for short-term lets not used as a sole or main home.

This would prevent a “hollowing out” of communities and give local councils greater control over their housing stock by making short-term lets subject to a planning process, the department said.

The government will also introduce a mandatory national register to provide regional authorities with information on holiday lets in their areas.

Those who let their own or main home for up to 90 nights throughout the year will not require planning permission, and the government is considering how to apply the register to those who let their main homes out infrequently.

The department also said that existing dedicated short-term lets will automatically be reclassified and will not need a fresh planning application. As the planning and registration measures relate to short-term lets, the changes will not affect hotels, hostels, and B&Bs.

As a result of the plans, “local residents will be protected from being pushed out of their communities by excessive short-term lets,” the department said.

Locals Being Shut Out of the Housing Market

The plans should provide support for tourist hotspots like Cornwall, where high numbers of short-term lets are preventing those in the community from being able to access homes to rent or buy.

Housing and Communities Minister Michael Gove said that while short-term lets play an important role in the tourism economy, “in some areas, too many local families and young people feel they are being shut out of the housing market and denied the opportunity to rent or buy in their own community.”

Mr. Gove continued: “So the Government is taking action as part of its long-term plan for housing. That means delivering more of the right homes in the right places, and giving communities the power to decide.

“This will allow local communities to take back control and strike the right balance between protecting the visitor economy and ensuring local people get the homes they need.”

Short-Term Lets Driving Rental Crisis

In July, members of the House of Lords heard how the short-term holiday let industry was creating a rental crisis in Britain’s coastal communities.

Lord Bishop of Exeter Robert Ronald Atwell had told peers that in Cornwall, just 208 properties are available for long-term rent compared with 19,000 holiday homes. While in neighbouring Devon, rentals had decreased to under 700, with almost 16,000 holiday lets being listed in the county.

Mr. Atwell described that one coastal beauty spot had 90 times more short-term holiday lets than homes.

The peer explained that the housing shortage also came at a societal cost to the local community, noting that in his own diocese of Salcombe, “there are now so few locals resident in the community that they are struggling to recruit volunteers for the lifeboat crew.”

Employers were also struggling to recruit to the hospitality and retail industries, while “health care providers and community services suffer shortages because key workers cannot afford to live in rural and coastal areas.”

England 1.34 Million Homes Short

Analysis by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank published in November 2023 estimated that England had underbuilt by 1.34 million homes in the past decade.

The CPS blamed the shortfall on “record net migration and sluggish housebuilding over the past decade.” The think tank suggested around half a million dwellings were needed in 2022 alone, higher than the 300,000-a-year housing target, which the government has never met.

CPS Deputy Research Director and report author Karl Williams said: “These figures highlight the historic rise in net migration and the failure of successive governments in tackling the housing crisis. Not only are we not building enough homes to meet demand from people already living in the UK, we are not even properly taking into account the needs of new arrivals.

Mr. Williams added, “The government needs to get a grip on the immigration system to deliver the control it promised at the last election and do more to encourage housebuilding—greenfield and brownfield, urban and rural, north and south—otherwise a growing portion of the population will find themselves locked out of home ownership by our cavernous housing deficit.”