Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, following recent actions by Palma and Valencia to ban the use of apartments as short-term holiday lets, what assessment they have made of the need for similar action in the UK.

There are no plans to ban the use of residential properties for short term letting.

The Government supports the sharing economy. Short term lettings enable households to supplement their income by renting out their under used accommodation and it promotes economic growth from tourism by increasing the amount of competitively priced accommodation available for tourists.

There is a responsibility on people who short term let out their homes, or rooms in their homes, to do so responsibly. Where short term lets breach the rules, responsibility for enforcement lies with the local authority, as it does for any breaches of planning control, and householders who breach the rules potentially face significant fines.

We are taking a non-regulatory approach by encouraging the Short Term Accommodation Association to improve standards and promote best practice in the industry, and to share data on booking with local authorities to aid their enforcement and monitoring functions.

Introducing further legislation would be overly bureaucratic, and would place unnecessary regulatory burdens on households which could act as a barrier to letting out their properties on a short term basis.