Short-term Holiday Lets

Lord Best Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, I should draw attention to the great work that my noble friend Lord Younger did in his role in the department. It is great, though, to have him back in the Whips’ Office.

The noble Lord was basically asking about regulation of the sector. As I said earlier, we do not have any plans to regulate the short-let market. Protection of residents and tourists is paramount, which is why we are working with the Short Term Accommodation Association to raise standards. The sharing economy creates wealth—we want to encourage it, not curtail it.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, for persisting with this issue, which is now topical; we are all beginning to realise its great significance. The Minister will know that the Government plan to introduce a regulator for estate agents, letting agents and managing agents. At the moment, it will not regulate bodies such as Airbnb, which organise these very short-term lettings, but it would not take much to add them to the new regulatory arrangements coming down the pipeline. Would that not be a sensible thing to do?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Best, chaired the working group on the regulation of property agents. It has reported and the Government are considering its response. As he said, the scope of the working group’s proposed new regulator extends only to property agents. As agreed with Ministers in the department, this excludes short-let platforms and hosts. We will consider these issues of scope when announcing next steps in response to the report.