New planning regulations designed to regulate short-term holiday lets in Scotland will be piloted in Edinburgh.

The regulations, which came into force on 1 April, afford the city council the ability to designate ‘short term let control areas’ in hot-spots within the Scottish capital.

The Scottish government will first need to draft further guidance on setting up the control areas, but once published, the city council is likely to consider draft proposals defining the extent of these zones. If adopted, the control areas will mean that by 2024 any whole residential properties within them that are being used as full-time holiday lets, will need the benefit of planning permission to continue to operate.

The reason for this timescale is that further new regulations requiring all such properties to be licensed by 2024 are also expected to come into force later this summer.

Tightening of the rules appears to have popular support in Edinburgh. During last year’s consultation on the city’s next Local Development Plan, 87% of respondents agreed that the Council should consult on the establishment of such control areas in relation to holiday lets.

Under the new planning regulations, once such areas are designated, the use of a whole dwelling for short-term lets would constitute a ‘material change of use’, meaning that planning permission would always be required.

The next stage in the evolution of the next Local Development Plan will be when a proposed plan is considered by committee. This is likely to be in August this year. 

Savills planner Angus Dodds commented: “The regulation of short-term lets has always occupied a murky area somewhere on the fringes of both planning and environmental health enforcement; meaning that many local authorities have traditionally taken a bit of a laissez-faire approach. However, both the recent planning regulations and the future licensing regulations represent something with a bit more teeth than we’ve been used to, meaning that owners should sit up and take stock sooner rather than later.

“Owners might be forgiven for thinking that 2024 is a long way off and accordingly a rather distant threat. However, in short term let control areas, if having a planning permission in place is a necessary pre-requisite of getting a licence to operate, the number of planning applications that will need to pass through the system before April 2023 will be considerable. Within Edinburgh, research conducted in May 2019 showed that 6167 ‘whole properties’ were available on Airbnb across the city’s most advertised 10 wards. In the City Centre ward alone there were 2142 such listings.

“The Council seems certain to use these new powers, but we don’t know yet how large its control zones might be. If it was to encompass the whole city for example, that would equate to an awful lot of planning applications. Given the City Council typically validates 400-500 applications every month, a sudden influx of several thousand additional applications could create serious delays if all owners wait till the last minute to get this addressed. In the circumstances keeping a close eye on the situation, and getting your planning application in early would seem to be a wise move”.