Housing: Holiday Lets

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, the problem is enforcement, as the Minister rightly said. Westminster is probably the best example of an authority that uses the enforcement procedure, but most authorities do not use the enforcement procedure for the 90-day limit to which the Minister referred. The market has completely changed. Will the Minister also address the fact that holiday lets and Airbnb lets are now dealt with very much on a commercial basis, but in blocks of flats very often one person or one company owns all the flats and let them through Airbnb? It is not people just earning a buck or two on their own home.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I remind the noble Lord that of course this is a London issue. The 90-day limit applies only in London—and, significantly, it is a real issue only in the inner London boroughs. I am encouraging the Short Term Accommodation Association to speak to those boroughs—as indeed it is doing—to see if it can carry forward the process that it is engaged in with Westminster into the other boroughs. For example, it is developing a Considerate Nightly Letting Charter with Westminster Council—again, that could be replicated for other councils. I remind noble Lords that, where a local authority has a suspicion that the law is being breached, it can apply to the Secretary of State to restrict the 90-day power and can take enforcement action. There is the power there; it is for local authorities to do that.