Short term lets new licensing scheme

[Markedforsl]

Can I ask whether anyone is having to deal with this? We have a spare room we advertise on AirBnb (occupied for a few months a year at most) and are considering using it for a lodger at some stage to provide a little retirement income. We're caught by these rules. If you have a lodger, rent a room out on AirBnb, or want to save money by doing a house swop for your holiday, you now have to comply with a large number of onerous and expensive rules to apply for a licence (the application is expected to cost a few £100s, not refundable if it's rejected). Gas safety checks, electrical checks and improvements, environmental inspection report, a check and certificate for every electrical device the lodger can access, taking photos of all fire safety labels on all furniture they can access, even more fire safety stuff than the new fire safety rules brought in recently, having to inform the neighbours and give them the chance to object, house inspections including potentially unannounced visits and even forcible entry, lots of paperwork. And then having to apply for renewals. Plus my area is considering making obtaining planning consent a requirement for everyone caught by the new rules.
This is surely the end of the road for people who just want to make use of a room in their house, and will mean higher prices and less availability for visitors? Scotland is very full this summer, with people complaining about accommodation prices. What will it be like when the rules kick in? Everyone is skint and getting skinter. This has to be seriously bad news for the tourism industry and for Scottish people who like holidaying in Scotland.

No disadvantages? It takes away a lot of basic freedoms that everyone else has. It will no longer be possible for your child to do a language exchange to France, for God's sake, because it will be illegal to have the French child to stay at your house for 2 weeks.

Illegal to do a house swop or to pay someone to stay in your home to look after your dog while you're on holiday for a week. Is this what people really want?

And a huge number of people in this country rely on making money from tourism, by renting a room, an annexe or whatever, or by selling leisure activities, food and so on to tourists. Those who rent out 3 cottages on Airbnb will be able to manage the cost and bureaucracy of the licence regime. It's the small scale people renting out a room or two who will pull out of tourism. They will get poorer, and so will Scotland as a whole. I stayed at a glamping site last week (they will be covered by the licence regime) and met some Australians who couldn't believe how much everything in Scotland costs. The licence fee will reduce the amount of accommodation available, and the remaining providers will raise their prices.

But this downside still doesn’t outweigh the considerable upsides of get housing stock back into long term residential use. Read the room! There’s a housing crisis out there! 30 people at least are going for each Edinburgh flat that comes on the rental market. That’s insane!

There is a massive difference between someone renting out a room in their family home on a temporary basis to a medical student on placement at the Royal or an international Professor visiting the Uni for a month and someone letting a whole property on AirBnB and removing that property from the rental market.

Yes, the medical student and visiting Professor need fire safe and Legionnaire disease free accommodation but given the spare room is probably also used for family and friends when not rented out, that could be taken as a given.

It's crazy there is no distinction between whole property let and shared property let.

And the long term rental situation is poor because there's been massive amounts of legislation there too. So much H & S, which is fair enough but combined with all the other stuff, just too much.

No wonder people went short term letting, better tax, less regulations, ease of getting possession, etc.

And the long term renting situation has also been exacerbated by landlords selling up due to increasing interest rates, taxation, no-fault evictions & rising costs in general.

It also doesn't make sense to treat the whole country the same way in terms of the licensing regime. There is clearly a bad situation in Edinburgh, but it's not the same in other parts of the country. Where I live, there's loads of housing (lots of new developments). Nowhere else is very similar to Edinburgh.

I'm caught up in this because I do home swap. I make no money from that, but I'll be expected to pay out potentially thousands of pounds to upgrade my flat, and apply for a licence which I might not even get!

This is the equivalent of insisting that parents who take turns at giving kids lifts to school or clubs should get taxi licences. Oh, and while we're at it - anyone who takes turns at walking kids to school and clubs will also have to get taxi licences, just because!

This is very true. Student accommodation in Glasgow and Edinburgh is like hens teeth. Because private landlords are being forced out of the market. Not everyone wants a secure tenancy for years and years. Students want 9 months. But they can’t get it. Dd is starting at Stirling this year and has halls - next year she’ll probably have to commute.

I used to homeswap and I am furious it's no longer an option. I don't believe homeswapping was having any impact at all on the supply of accommodation to let, nor where there lots of safety issues about doing so.

Also do schools who allow their pupils to do language exchanges know they are potentially breaking the law?

A lot of language exchanges have stopped because of the whole issues around needing PVG checks for all adult members of the family. Other countries - mainly France - have very different ideas around police checking and parents would recoil in horror at the idea of school potentially knowing their private business. Schools in the UK have to complete a risk assessment and many will decide that the risk of having a teenager in an unchecked household is too high.

I know the school my kids go to changed from having an exchange model to having a school visit model where the children go to France and stay in youth hostel style accommodation rather than with their exchange partner. I got so much out of my language exchange, it's such a pity these can't happen any more.

It's typical of the Scot Gov to get it so wrong though - they want to tackle Air BNB in Edinburgh and end up affecting all this other stuff like home swaps because they're too useless to get the legal stuff right.

I think part of the problem is that SNP gov is so controlling. Edinburgh council has been trying to do something about the Airbnb problem for ages, but SNP doesn't like local solutions. So now they've come out with this convoluted legislation which seem to go the other extreme.

And of course landlords prefer to make more money on Airbnb with fewer legal restrictions and obligations, but that doesn't mean we should return to the old days of dodgy electrics and disappearing house deposits. I would say a well run private letting sector has to be strictly regulated.

It will be interesting to see if they start cross referencing properties listed on airB&B / booking.com etc and licences.

Actually, language exchanges run via schools are exempted from the legislation. But privately organised exchanges (which is what my children did) will be more problematic. They may be possible if you get official approval from the school.

This is really about basic freedoms / human rights. I am embarrassed to tell foreign friends about the restrictions we live under here.

No offence @Markedforsl , but have you lived abroad much? From the 3 countries I lived in so far UK is by far the most lax on regulations. No ID, no registration where you live, no crazy tax system. Easy to change rentals, set up bank accounts, etc. And I'm talking Europe here.

Well designed regulation is imo good, since it protects people from exploitation. Sometimes it can be limiting or require you to do some extra paperwork, but I'm happier with that than with the attitude of anything goes. But hey people disagree 😄

Im not sure I'd describe the short term let proposals or indeed the regualtions that long term landlords have to abide by as " a bit of extra paperwork". Have you tried to let a property ?

Are there home letters on this forum, particularly in Edinburgh?
I’ve been contacted by STL Solutions - they received notification that planning officers in Edinburgh are stating that anyone renting for 28+ days/year must apply for planning. 2 weeks ago they said someone staying only 2 months/year didn’t require planning.

There is an urgent meeting at to discuss the options given this new information.
2pm, Friday 1 September

Here’s the link: us05web.zoom.us/j/8713063689?pwd=WTs0ZuS8aMizSJxKDbZrStSon70vhI.1

It really isn't an extra bit of paperwork. When they brought in the HMO legislation it was very problematic as a lot of the Georgian flats needed a lot of changes, like fire doors and all sorts of things. The electrical work required is fairly significant too. Then there's the legionella checks, PAT testing, EICR and gas checks.

None of those apply to AirBnB.

I don't see how requiring people to go through a very lengthy, uncertain and expensive licensing process, which may also involve making expensive changes to their house, before they can do a 1 week house swop or have someone to stay for a week to look after their dog is necessary to avoid "exploitation". You may even technically have to do this before you invite a friend to stay overnight who takes you out for a meal. One of my children recently did a course abroad and needed somewhere to stay. I paid a friend to rent a room to the DC for a few months. If the friend asks me to reciprocate by renting a room to one of her adult children, I will have to tell her that my doing so would be illegal. I know that she will find that almost impossible to believe. She lives in Germany, which is very bureaucratic, but rented the room quickly and easily with no need to apply for any kind of licence or to make any alterations to her house.
There's no reason why someone staying in your family home for a week needs you to do a legionnaire check or needs you to provide them with an EPC certificate. I think it also shows a complete lack of understanding of or disdain for the tourism industry to think that it's okay to authorise local authorities to change their rules on licensing at any time without notice, so that people who have licenses are then immediately acting illegally in having people to stay, and are actually supposed to throw those people out of their accommodation and to cancel all future bookings immediately. Apparently the SNP government thinks that's fine if you just say in your terms and conditions that bookings are subject to the licensing rules. What a great way to wreck the reputation of Scotland as a tourist destination.

But do you have objections to whole-flat short term lettings in shared entrance blocks of flats needing planning permission for a change of use? I think we can all agree that it’s only fair to other stairwell residents that you have planning permission for your airB&B business, and there is a process for other residents to object.

In that case draft the legislation to apply only to whole properties in common closes - don't include house swaps where no cash changes hands, a room in a persons home or properties within the grounds of a detached or semi detached property.

Scottish Govt seem incapable of drafting legislation which can easily be implemented to actually address the problem it is supposed to.

Our local authority, bizarrely, requires you to carpet your hall if you want to get a licence. Another ludicrous expense which I can't for the life of me see any reason for. It could conceivably be to keep the noise down in flats, but there are very few flats in our region, and the authority could of course have specified that it's for flats only.