The government has today announced even more regulations on short term lets in England which will force property owners to apply for planning permission if they want to run one. A mandatory national registration scheme is also coming in to get properties on a state register. Stretching the broken planning system over the only dynamic part of the industry is absurd…

Short Term Accommodation Association CEO Andy Fenner has come out all guns blazing. He says “the holiday let industry is doomed to continue being unfairly regarded as tourism’s problem child, second-best to hotels, and unjustly taking the brunt of the blame game surrounding housing supply and affordability, despite the lack of a proper evidence base. The presumption is that, if you shut down all short term rentals tomorrow, the housing crisis would be solved but that is naive in the extreme. Short term lets are the modern, dynamic face of the tourism industry and we can’t force people into B&Bs and hotels through legislation.”

Maxwell Marlow, Director of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, argues “the government’s war on hospitality has taken a further step. Small family enterprises choose to use their limited resources to give space to tourists to visit their communities, and those community businesses respond well to this market. We must ask, who decides how one can use a property? Is it the owner as has always rightfully been the case, or local government?” The bloated hand of the state choking even more of the economy…

The Institute of Economic Affairs’ Matthew Lesh says “the government is scapegoating holiday lets for the housing crisis. A national registration scheme and requiring permission to use one’s own property for holiday lets will not fix anything. But it will add to Britain’s red tape nightmare and could end up doing more damage to local communities by hurting their tourism economy“.

The Centre for Policy Studies’ External Affairs Director Emma Revell points out that “the housing crisis has reached such a peak in some parts of the country that the government is resorting to making it more difficult to go on holiday. Airbnbs, short-term lets, and even second homes account for a tiny fraction of properties in England. Local frustration is understandable but ire should be focused on the problem – a lack of building – not the symptoms. Restrictions on Airbnbs will not touch the sides when we need over 5 million homes in the next fifteen years to keep pace with population growth.”

New controls on short term lets in Scotland have already pushed listings off a cliff – making it more difficult to register a property Airbnb or will just make holidays more miserable in the UK. To suggest it will have any impact on housing is laughable. The government is intent on these counter-productive spasms instead of letting more houses be built…