Letting agents in a large seaside resort have been accused of ‘actively encouraging’ home owners to rent out their homes as holiday lets ‘under the radar’.

The comments have been made by Brighton holiday lets specialist Catherine Lane during an evidence session held by the city’s council as it prepares to submit its response to the Government’s ongoing consultation on holiday lets regulation.

Speaking during a council committee meeting, Brighton and Hove News reports that she knew of letting agents urging people to circumvent planning rules by letting ‘main residences’ in places such as Kemptown (main image) let out for brief periods and also therefore dodging business rates and other taxes.

This comes as Labour prepares to get its Short Lets Registration Scheme off the ground with several pilots soon to be announced before it goes national.

Registration scheme

The registration scheme is to be an online register and will see all those who let out homes via holiday lets required to register their properties, and is designed to help local authorities identify ‘under the radar’ holiday lets and understand how many homes within their boundaries are being used in this way.

It will also be used to stop owners renting out properties which are not their main home for more than 90 days without planning permission.

On Thursday a senior Labour figure promised to lobby Government ministers to ensure central London is one of the first areas of the UK to pilot the scheme.

Pilot scheme

Lucy Powell, who is Leader of the House of Commons and for a while during 2020/2021 was shadow housing minister, has made the comments in response to a parliamentary questions from fellow Labour MP Rachel Blake.

She represents a key central London constituency and told Powell that hers should be one of the first to trial the looming registration scheme, which is expected to see all councils eventually given the option to force short-let landlords to be registered before they can be rented out on platforms such as Airbnb.

Blake quoted a recent report by lobbying group Central London Forward, which was published in January and revealed that some 43,000 ‘whole properties’ (rather than rooms) have been lost to Airbnb and Vrbo which Savills, the company that completed the research, has called ‘the greatest loss to the PRS in central London’. In Brighton this is estimated to be up to 6,000 properties.

The research found that Westminster has the highest number of short lets at 16,000 and that across central London, ‘big portfolio’ landlords with more than 21 properties accounted for a quarter of short-lets units.