Short-term lets: regulation information

Monitoring

The Minister for Housing wrote to the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on 28 June 2023 to provide an update on the implementation of short-term let licensing in Scotland.

As part of this, the Minister advised a further update would follow in 2024 and that the Scottish Government would confirm the scope later in 2023.

In October 2023, the Minister wrote to the Committee again to outline the scope of an ongoing iterative process to monitor delivery and to identify solutions to any operational challenges, as well as what emerging good practice looks like.

The scope of the 2024 update is to:

• report and reflect on initial short-term let licence application levels across Scotland, in the context of estimates recorded in the independent research undertaken in 2019;
• consider current operational processes; and
• identify operational improvements, where appropriate, and update previously published impact assessments with actual data in place of estimated information, where available.

The Minister clarified it is not in scope to amend the core principles of licensing, which the Committee and Parliament recognised as being integral to the original legislation. This forms the basis for local schemes to which many thousands of hosts have already applied for licences. This means the intent is not to alter licensing types (home-sharing, home letting and secondary letting), the core principles of licensing (mandatory and additional conditions, public scrutiny and opportunity to object) or the delegation of powers to licensing authorities to administer local licensing schemes.

In January 2024, the Minister provided information to the Committee about progress with the implementation update. This advised that the Scottish Government is publishing quarterly official statistics about short-term let licensing applications. We started publishing the statistics about licence applications in August 2023. The latest statistical publication covered the period up to 31 December 2023 and was published on 23rd of May 2024.

We took forward two initial actions, as a result of initial monitoring work as follows:

• we brought forward an affirmative Scottish Statutory Instrument that will amend The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022. The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Amendment Order 2024 was laid on 16 May 2024 and passed by the Scottish Parliament on 26 June 2024. The Scottish Parliament will be informed of the date the Amendment Order 2024 will take effect in due course.
• Scotland’s Housing Network has convened an operational improvement group comprising several licensing authority volunteers to identify and share good practice with all licensing authorities. It will liaise with other groups as required including the Industry Advisory Group (facilitated by Visit Scotland), SOLAR and the wider Scotland’s Housing Network short-term let licensing information sharing forum.

Representations from industry bodies, agritourism and hosts/operators emphasised the importance of enabling the sector to continue to thrive, while being compliant with regulation. The legislation amendments therefore include:

• the introduction of powers enabling the transfer of short-term let licences (which will aid the selling and purchase of short-term let accommodation);
• the option for prospective hosts constructing buildings for short-term let use to apply for a provisional licence that can be confirmed once the premises are complete (which will support the financial lending approval process);
• exclusions for guest rooms in specific types of accommodation (which will cover hospitals, nursing homes and sheltered housing); and
• exclusions for short-term emergency accommodation provided by foster carers for foster child/ren (long-term term care where the accommodation is the foster child’s main residence is already excluded).
• changes to allow up to three periods of temporary exemptions in each calendar year which must not exceed a combined total of six weeks overall.

We intend to provide the Scottish Parliament with the more comprehensive update on short-term let licensing implementation in the summer of 2024. This will be informed by:

• analysis of official statistics for the period 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2023;
• information about local operation of licensing schemes;
• data gathered via Heads of Planning Authorities about planning activity for short-term lets since licensing was introduced;
• findings from engagement, including what further actions will/ are being taken in partnership with COSLA/licensing authorities and other stakeholders;
• areas that require further monitoring (and consultation) before action might be taken;
• consideration of ongoing monitoring structures and feedback mechanisms;
• actual data in place of estimated information in previously published impact assessments, where available and within scope.