A consultation published in April will look at new rules to give communities greater control over short-term holiday lets while supporting the tourism sector.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has proposed introducing planning permission for turning an existing home into a short-term let, to ensure local people are supported in areas where large numbers of holiday homes are preventing them from finding affordable housing.
In a response to a 2022 government consultation on developing a tourist accommodation scheme in England, the LGA highlighted that councils have been raising concerns about the impact of unregulated growth in this sector for some time.
The response states that this is not an issue faced by all local authorities but is instead more prevalent in visitor “honeypot” destinations.
“We believe this indicates the need for regulation that allows local discretion and implementation, ensuring that the response is proportionate for those places without significant challenges while also enabling those places with significant impact on their communities to take action,” said the LGA.
“While there is extensive and comprehensive anecdotal evidence of the growing impact of this type of accommodation, there are few opportunities to record and quantify the impact on communities and services.
“This lack of direct evidence is not a reason to do nothing, but emphasises the need to develop, as a minimum, a registration scheme to ensure that councils and emergency services are aware of how many of these properties are located in their areas and can start recording incidents related to them.”
