The bill requires the Secretary of State to enable local housing authorities in England to introduce local licensing schemes for short‑term lets and sets out a long list of powers and owner obligations those schemes may include. Owners could have to hold and renew licences, pay application and licence charges, obtain safety certificates and EPCs, carry insurance, contract for waste collection, and produce evidence of ongoing compliance; local authorities would publish licence registers and may inspect properties before issuing licences.
Beyond licensing, the bill mandates national regulations on marketing (including mandatory display of licence numbers and platform takedowns when licences are revoked), removes eligibility for small business rates relief for short‑term lets, and allows planning conditions preventing new residential properties being used as short‑term lets. For councils, platforms, hosts and developers the measure changes the regulatory and commercial landscape: it creates new compliance costs, enforcement triggers and data‑sharing requirements while giving local authorities tools to limit the number and availability of short‑term lets to protect housing supply and neighbourhood amenity.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill creates a framework for local licensing schemes that can require hosts to obtain licences, meet safety, energy and insurance standards, pay fees and submit to inspections, and allows councils to set quantity limits, day‑limits and impose fines. It also requires regulations on how short‑term lets are marketed—mandating licence numbers on listings and obliging platforms to remove revoked listings and supply information to specified authorities.
Who It Affects
Primary targets are owners and managers of properties let for no more than 28 days, online marketplaces and publication platforms that list those properties, and local housing and planning authorities tasked with running, monitoring and enforcing schemes. Small-scale hosts, property managers and short‑term let businesses will face most of the new compliance work and costs.
Why It Matters
The bill transfers considerable discretion to local authorities to control the local supply and conduct of short‑term lets, altering how hosts operate and how platforms moderate listings. It also links licensing to planning, taxation (small business rates relief exclusion) and enforcement pathways — meaning the bill reshapes regulatory levers across housing, local finance and platform regulation.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill does two kinds of things: it gives local housing authorities the statutory route to create licensing schemes for short‑term lets and it sets national rules for how short‑term lets are marketed, taxed and treated in planning. The Secretary of State must make regulations enabling each local housing authority to decide whether to introduce a scheme; the content of those schemes is driven by lists of owner obligations and council powers laid out in the bill, rather than a single national licence model.
Under the model the bill requires, owners would need to secure licences before letting, pay application and licence charges, and meet recurring compliance conditions such as fire, gas and electrical safety certificates, energy performance certificates, annual electrical testing, carbon monoxide monitoring evidence, compliant furniture and appropriate insurance. Licences must be renewed at least every three years or on a change of property ownership or management; councils must inspect properties before granting licences and keep a public register with addresses, capacity and annual advertised‑days figures.Councils get a broad enforcement toolkit: they can refuse, suspend or revoke licences; set caps on the number of licences in an area or days‑per‑year limits for individual properties; impose fines and remove licences for repeated nuisance or criminal activity; restrict parking permits for licensed properties; and levy a tourism charge.
On the marketing side, the Secretary of State must require licence numbers appear on all listings, compel platforms to remove revoked listings and to hand specified property data to HMRC, the police or other designated public bodies on request; breaches attract fines up to £10,000. The bill also requires regulations to make short‑term lets ineligible for small business rates relief and permits planning conditions to prevent new dwellings from being used as short‑term lets.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Local schemes may require hosts to hold and renew a licence at least every three years and to submit safety certificates (fire, gas, electricity), an energy performance certificate and evidence of carbon monoxide monitoring.
Local authorities must inspect properties before issuing licences and keep a public register listing addresses, whether the owner occupies part of the property, occupancy capacity and advertised/let days per year.
Councils can cap numbers of licences in a defined area, limit days‑per‑year for individual properties, suspend or revoke licences for repeated nuisance or criminal activity, and impose a tourism levy or vary local taxes on licensed properties.
Regulations will require platforms and publishers to display valid licence numbers on listings, remove properties whose licences are revoked, and supply specified information to HMRC, the police or other public authorities; breaches can draw fines up to £10,000.
The Secretary of State must make short‑term lets ineligible for small business rates relief and may enable planning conditions that prohibit the use of newly permitted residential properties as short‑term lets.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Delegates power to enable local licensing schemes
Section 1 requires the Secretary of State to make regulations allowing each local housing authority in England to introduce a local licensing scheme for short‑term lets. This is a framework power: it does not compel councils to adopt schemes but removes legal doubt about their capacity to do so under statute. Practically, implementation depends on secondary regulations the Secretary of State must later draw up.
Mandatory owner obligations local schemes may impose
Section 2 lists the operational requirements that regulations must permit local schemes to require of owners — from pre‑trade licences and fees to specific safety certifications, EPCs, annual electrical testing, insurance, waste contracts and ongoing compliance evidence. The clause bundles both prescriptive safety standards and administrative burdens into the licence regime, making licence conditions the vehicle for technical and managerial compliance rather than separate statutory duties.
Transparency and procedural duties for local authorities
Section 3 obliges councils introducing schemes to publish standard licence terms, the application and renewal processes, and to fix and (where partly let) vary licence fees. It also requires pre‑issue inspections, the assignment of unique licence numbers and maintenance of an up‑to‑date list of licensed properties including capacity and advertised days — all elements that raise transparency but also create administrative responsibilities and data‑handling obligations for councils.
Council enforcement and quantity‑control powers
Section 4 grants councils power to refuse, suspend or limit licences, to set area‑based caps, and to set day‑limits per property. It lists grounds for fine or removal of licences (including repeated nuisance, criminal activity or missing EPCs) and allows councils to restrict parking permits and levy tourism charges. The provision gives local authorities both behavioural controls (nuisance, safety) and market‑shaping tools (caps, day limits, levies).
Marketing rules and platform obligations
Section 5 requires national regulations that make displaying a valid licence number compulsory on all listings, prohibit use of expired or mis‑assigned licence numbers, and require platforms to remove revoked listings. Crucially it empowers the Secretary of State to oblige platforms to provide specified property information to HMRC, police or other public bodies on request and sets a maximum fine of £10,000 for breaches by owners or platforms.
Business rates treatment
Section 6 directs the Secretary of State to make short‑term lets ineligible for small business rates relief. That changes the tax profile of affected properties and signals a policy intent to treat short‑term lets as a different class of commercial activity for local rate relief schemes.
Planning permission conditions
Section 7 enables the Secretary of State to allow local planning authorities to include conditions on grants of planning permission for new residential properties that prohibit their use as short‑term lets. This inserts a planning‑based prevention tool, affecting developers and the future flexibility of housing supply rights on newly consented units.
Enforcement architecture and statutory instrument controls
Section 8 permits regulations under the Act to create civil and criminal penalties and other enforcement routes; section 9 sets out the SI process. The bill reserves affirmative parliamentary approval for the first use of the power, any SI that modifies primary legislation and any SI creating criminal offences; other regulations are subject to the negative procedure. This mixed parliamentary oversight is an important constraint on how far the Secretary of State can expand the regime by secondary legislation.
Definitions, geographic extent and commencement
Section 10 defines key terms (notably a short‑term let as occupancy of no more than 28 days and what constitutes an ‘area’) and references local housing authority under the Housing Act 2004. Section 11 provides that the Act comes into force on passage, extends to England and Wales and sets the short title — a detail that raises a drafting tension with earlier text focused on English local authority powers.
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Explore Housing in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Residents and neighbours of high‑tourism areas — the bill gives local councils tools to curb noise, nuisance and parking pressure by capping licences, limiting let days and creating a local complaints contact to report issues.
- Long‑term tenants and home‑seekers — by enabling councils to limit the number and availability of short‑term lets and require reporting on local housing supply impacts, the bill aims to reduce conversions of housing stock to transient use, which could improve local long‑term supply.
- Local housing and planning authorities — the bill supplies explicit statutory powers and duties (licensing, inspection, register maintenance and enforcement powers) clarifying the legal basis for intervention and increasing transparency of short‑term‑let activity.
- Regulated hospitality (hotels and B&Bs) — by removing small business rate relief for short‑term lets and tightening safety and marketing rules, the bill narrows a competitive gap with commercial accommodation that already runs under stricter regulatory regimes.
Who Bears the Cost
- Small‑scale hosts and individual landlords — they face licence fees, inspection costs, safety and EPC certification costs, insurance and waste‑contract obligations, and potential fines or licence loss for breaches.
- Online platforms and publishers — platforms must display licence numbers, take down revoked listings, and respond to information requests from HMRC, police and other authorities, imposing operational and legal‑compliance costs and potential fines up to £10,000.
- Local authorities — running pre‑issue inspections, maintaining public registers, monitoring compliance and enforcing schemes will require staffing and systems; unless fees and levies cover these costs, councils will face resource pressures.
- Developers and investors — the power to attach planning conditions preventing short‑term use reduces flexibility and could alter development valuations where build‑to‑rent or short‑stay models were anticipated.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits two legitimate objectives against each other: protecting neighbourhood amenity and local housing supply through granular local controls versus preserving owners’ and platforms’ commercial freedoms and the economic value of short‑term lets. Tight local controls and marketing obligations reduce nuisance and free up long‑term housing but impose compliance costs, operational burdens and potential loss of income for hosts and platforms — and they transfer enforcement cost and judgement calls to councils.
The bill delegates heavy detail to secondary regulations while setting wide‑ranging powers for local authorities; this pushes the hard choices into forthcoming statutory instruments and local policy decisions. That approach creates uncertainty about the final shape of compliance obligations (for example, exact safety standards, fee levels, and the form of evidence required) until the Secretary of State and councils publish the implementing regulations and local scheme specifics.
Enforcement and resourcing are unresolved. The bill creates inspection and monitoring duties for councils but does not specify funding mechanisms beyond permitting licence charges and local taxes; councils may struggle to implement robust enforcement without clear statutory funding or fee‑setting constraints.
Requiring platforms to supply data to HMRC, police and other bodies raises cross‑jurisdictional compliance questions and potential conflict with data‑protection and commercial contractual limits — the bill does not define scope, format or safeguards for those data disclosures.
Finally, the drafting mixes geographic references (enabling English local authorities to adopt regimes while the Act’s extent covers England and Wales) and leaves open interactions with existing housing, planning and licensing regimes; that could produce legal challenges or require further statutory fixes, particularly where devolved administrations or overlapping local laws are implicated.
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