Short Term Lets Licensing Statistics Scotland to 31 December 2025
Statistics on short-term lets applications in Scotland
Part of
Summary of total valid applications received, granted, and in operation
This publication reports data from when the Short-Term Lets Licensing Scheme opened to receive applications from 1 October 2022 until 31 December 2025.
Local authorities are only required to provide data on all applications they have validated. An application is validated once local authorities confirm that all the required information and documentation has been provided, and the host has made an application fee payment. Therefore, this publication does not report on all applications received, as some applications may have been received but not validated as of December 2025.
Chart 1: Total applications validated, granted by date received, as of end December 2025.
Notes:
- Data from Table 2 in the supporting Excel tables
Since the short-term let licensing scheme was introduced in Scotland (October 2022) there have been at least 42,355 applications for a short-term licence received by local authorities as of end December 2025. Of which, 40,434 were validated applications.
Chart 1 illustrates that most applications were received in July to September 2023 just before the 1 October cut off for existing hosts and operators to apply for a provisional licence to continue operating. After this period the number of applications decreased, with 1,163 applications validated for the latest quarter (October to December 2025).
Table 1: Summary of total applications validated, granted and in operation, as of end December 2025
| Total received as of end December 2025 | % valid applications | |
|---|---|---|
|
Valid applications |
40,434 |
- |
|
Applications still to be validated that were reported |
1,921 |
- |
|
Licences granted (including now lapsed and superseded licences) |
36,584 |
90% |
|
Applications pending determination. |
1,481 |
4% |
|
Applications withdrawn by applicant |
1,397 |
3% |
|
Applications refused / revoked / suspended / refusal to consider |
972 |
2% |
|
Licences granted (excluding now lapsed licences and including temporary licences and exemptions) |
32,313 |
- |
|
Provisional licences in operation |
4 |
- |
|
Licences in operation |
32,317 |
- |
As Table 1 shows, most valid applications were granted a licence or exemption (90%) as of 31 December 2025. With 4% of applications awaiting determination as of 31 December 2025, 87% of these applications were received in the last 6 months. A further 3% of applications were withdrawn, and 2% were refused, suspended, or refusal to consider.
There were 32,317 short-term let licences or exemptions in operation as of 31 December 2025. A minority of licences or exemptions were in operation were temporary (1%; 192).