How do you solve a problem like Airbnb? The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has some thoughts.
The Government has announced that they want to launch a consultation on the impact of holiday lets with a view to introducing new rules which would mean that anyone who wants to turn an existing home into a short-term holiday let needs planning permission.
About time, too.
From Cornwall to Cumbria, Wales to East Anglia, communities in areas where tourists flock are struggling because the number of places where local people can afford to live has diminished. These are the same local people who work in hospitals and schools. The same local people who service the tourism industry and make sure that holidaymakers have somewhere to eat, drink and sleep.
But, in recent years, they’ve been pushed out by rising rents and cut out of the housing market by landlords who have turned homes for private rent into holiday lets.
As the lobby group Generation Rent warned back in 2021, average rental prices in tourist hotspots such as coastal areas of Wales, Devon and Cornwall had risen by about a quarter since the start of the pandemic in 2020 and landlords were evicting their tenants so they could turn homes into holiday lets or Airbnbs because it was more lucrative.
This is because some holiday let landlords can get a tax break via small business rates relief, but private landlords cannot.
The results of this have been devastating. Last autumn I visited the Lake District where I found no homes – none – available for private rent to local people and a social housing shortage which meant that key workers and tourism workers had been forced to leave the towns and villages that they had grown up in and commute back to the Lakes.
As 32-year-old Alex Winson, who works in a cash and carry which provides supplies for almost all of the hotels and B&Bs in the Lakes, told me: “As a working-class person, I don’t feel welcome in this area anymore.”
Alex grew up in the Lake District but now lives 35 miles away in Morecambe because he couldn’t afford to stay.
DLUHC say that they want to “help local people to find housing in their area, while ensuring the tourism industry can continue to thrive”. It’s a noble goal and this consultation is long overdue, but it might be a little like shutting the door after the horse has bolted.
The damage has been done and it’s worth remembering that it’s not just holiday lets which are preventing people from finding affordable housing in their area. It’s also historically high private rents and a national social housing shortage.
A serious attempt to make sure that Britain’s tourism hotspots and areas of natural beauty can cater to holidaymakers and local people would take that into account too.
Of the announcement, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, said: “Tourism brings many benefits to our economy but in too many communities we have seen local people pushed out of cherished towns, cities and villages by huge numbers of short-term lets.
“I’m determined that we ensure that more people have access to local homes at affordable prices and that we prioritise families desperate to rent or buy a home of their own close to where they work.”
“I have listened to representations from MPs in tourist hot spots and am pleased to launch this consultation to introduce a requirement for planning permissions for short-term lets.”
