Oral Answers to Questions

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

7. Whether his Department is taking steps to change the balance between short and long-term rentals.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

We are consulting on a registration scheme for short-term lets and on the introduction of a short-term let use class and associated permitted development rights. Those changes would give councils more control over the number of new short-term lets and help them to meet local housing needs.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I appreciate the Minister’s response, but where we have non-unitary councils it turns out that the Government’s measure of 200% council tax will see 92% go to counties and only 8% to districts. Will that be looked at? In addition, will we also examine how we can incentivise long-term landlords? We demonise landlords at our peril and we need to make sure that if we are going to repeal section 21, we do it in a way whereby we can offer them justice on being able to remove tenants where they need to do so.

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the Government’s progress on all the work we are doing to be fair, not only to landlords, but to tenants, who have suffered some appalling experiences in many cases. That is why we are bringing forward the legislation, which will be a balanced package, but he is right to highlight the issue of council taxes and I know he is having discussions with the Treasury on that matter. We are determined to make sure that local authorities have the right balance between having those holiday and tourist areas, and homes for local people.