Labour MP introduces bill to track short-term lets

MPs have called for the government to go further to clamp down on short-term lets by changing data-management rules.

Labour MP for Westminster and Cities of London, Rachel Blake, has introduced a Ten-Minute Rule bill to keep track of how many nights a home is rented out as a short-term let.

In London, short-term lets are limited to 90 nights per year without planning permission. However, Ms Blake argues that enforcing this is effectively impossible under current systems due to the difficulty of obtaining accurate data.

Enforcing 90-day limit will be an elusive task

The government has committed to introducing a mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets.

Under the scheme, hosts will need to register their property’s address and will be issued a unique reference number. This number must be displayed on all platforms where the property is listed.

Hosts will also be required to confirm that they are complying with existing regulations for short-term lets, including fire safety, gas, and electrical certifications.

However, Labour MP Rachel Blake says that while this is a positive step, many properties are still breaking the rules.

According to data from AirDNA, nearly 6,000 short-term lets in the Cities of London and Westminster are being rented for more than the 90-day annual limit.

She said: “The registration scheme must collect a crucial piece of information that we currently cannot access: the number of nights for which homes are being let out. Without this crucial data, enforcing the 90-day limit will remain an elusive task to local authority planning enforcement teams

“Why can we not record this data? The Data Protection Act 2018 currently prevents such information from being shared. While the act is crucial for ensuring that our personal data is more secure than in comparable countries outside the EU, in this case, it stands in the way of effectively regulating short-term lets. A number of exemptions exist in the legislation, however, and the Bill would extend them to include the number of nights for which short-term lets are used.

Licensing as a solution to tackle short-term lets

Ms Blake also echoed London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s comments on licensing short-term lets.

She said: “Time and again, my constituents bring up licensing as a possible solution to the spread of short-term lets, backed by reams of research from policy experts. Just as a business must apply to open a bar or café in a local area, so too should the host of a short-term let have to apply to their local authority before opening what is, in essence, a micro-hotel in the middle of a residential block.

“While every local authority should be able to undertake its open approach to this issue, local authorities such as Westminster and the City of London, where concentrations are so high, need to have the power to decide where homes can be let out and under what conditions.”