Mayor demands licensing scheme to prevent short-term lets damaging housing supply

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is calling on the Government to help protect London’s housing supply from being decimated by short-term lets.

The rapid growth in short-term lets in London in recent years, fuelled by online platforms such as Airbnb, is one element fuelling London’s housing crisis. In July 2023, there were 81,792 listings in London on AirBnB alone1. Of these, 50,401 are for entire properties, meaning at least one in every seventy-four homes in the capital is available for short-term let.

London is one of the tourism capitals of the world and short-term lets are a key part of the visitor ecosystem. But due to a lack of sufficient regulation or resources for boroughs to monitor the situation, it is unclear how many may be being let against the rules for more than 90 days a year.

Therefore, the Mayor is calling on the Government to work with him and boroughs to implement a licensing system for short-term lets. This would allow local authorities to limit the numbers of licenses issued in their area and avoid entire streets or blocks being turned over exclusively to short- term lets.

Homeowners are entitled to rent out their homes for up to 90 days a year, but it is possible that many property owners in London are breaching this restriction whilst boroughs do not have the resources to monitor compliance.

Charging for licences and enforcing business rates for properties let for more than 90 days a year would also generate a financial reward for councils who have seen their budgets repeatedly cut in recent years, allowing them to run more effective enforcement activity against unregistered landlords.

The Mayor’s call to action comes as part of his response to two Government consultations on the future of short-term lets. Proposals from Ministers to control the sector using planning powers or a voluntary register have both been criticised by the Mayor and boroughs for not going far enough to tackle the problem.

The issue of short-term lets reducing cities’ housing supply is not unique to London and the Mayor has looked to the example of other world cities for inspiration. Barcelona, Amsterdam and Paris all have forms of licencing scheme in place, with the French government going further to push short term lets platforms such as Air BnB to publicly share data about listings.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “I am doing all I can to tackle the housing crisis in London, building a record number of the genuinely affordable, high-quality homes that Londoners deserve.

“This is why I’m calling on the Government to work with me and borough councils to design a licencing system to bring some order to this rapidly growing sector and prevent us losing yet more homes for Londoners to the short-term let sector.”

Cllr Georgia Gould, leader of Camden Council, said: “In Camden we have seen the use of residential properties as short-term lets regularly exceed what is lawfully permitted. Last year alone we recorded over 4,400 short term lets in our borough, of which almost a quarter (24 per cent) exceeded the 90-night limit.

“Camden stands by the Mayor’s call for a mandatory register of short term lets, with sufficient penalties that will allow Councils like ours to properly enforce the 90-night limit, so that we can bring much-needed properties back into residential use and our residents can access the homes they need to live, work, and build their lives in the capital.”

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

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