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Short Term Lets: Consultation on a licensing scheme and planning control areas in Scotland

A consultation will gather final views on proposed new legislation for the regulation of short-term lets.

The Scottish Government’s proposals include a mandatory licensing scheme to ensure that all short-term lets are safe and to address issues faced by neighbours.

The regulations, if passed by Parliament, would come into force by April 2021. These would also give councils powers to manage pressures created by the use of whole properties as short-term lets.

Read the consultation paper on the Scottish Government website.

The consultation runs until Friday 16 October.

Regulation of short-term lets: announcement 8 Jan 2020

Kevin Stewart MSP, Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning announced in a statement to Parliament on 8 Jan that the Scottish Government will:

Introduce licencing for short-term lets, under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, with a mandatory safety component which will apply to all short-term lets across Scotland. Local authorities will also be given the discretion to put in place further conditions; to help tackle littering or overcrowding of properties, for example.

Prioritise work to give local authorities the power to introduce short-term let control areas under powers in the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019.

Undertake a review of the tax treatment of short-term lets, to ensure they make an appropriate contribution to the communities they operate in.

This follows careful consideration of consultation responses, and the evidence provided by the independent research on the impact of short-term lets on communities, published on 28 Oct 2019.

Further details of the annoucement can be found in the news release.

Consultation responses published 28 Oct 2019

The consultation on a regulatory framework for short-term lets in Scotland Closed on 23 July 2019, receiving over 1,000 responses. We are grateful to all who responded.

Responses to the consultation, an independent analysis of those responses and a report on independent research on the impact of short-term lets on communities were published on 28 October 2019.

The Scottish Government will carefully consider the consultation responses and evidence of the consultation analysis and research reports before setting out our proposals.