Short-term lets: planning decisions must mean something

Edinburgh’s residents need a regulatory system that follows through on its promise to protect homes and communities.

For residents who have objected to a neighbouring flat becoming a short-term let, a planning refusal ought to settle the matter. Their concerns have been heard, the proposal assessed and a decision reached. They are entitled to expect that decision to count.

Where the property also holds a short-term let licence, it often does not. Planning and licensing run as separate processes, with separate requirements and separate enforcement, and residents are left asking why a question they thought had been answered remains open.

Recent scrutiny of how the two systems fit together has brought the problem into focus. It goes to the heart of Edinburgh’s housing pressures, and to the everyday life of the shared stair.

A licence is not a planning permission

Licensing and planning do different jobs. Licensing deals with matters such as the safety and management of accommodation. Planning asks whether a use is acceptable in its location, judged against policy and its effect on the surrounding area. Both are needed.

The trouble lies in how they connect. Where the relevant planning requirement applies, mandatory licensing condition 13 is satisfied either by planning permission in force or by a planning application awaiting determination. Permission need not have been granted. A licence therefore says nothing conclusive about whether a use has planning consent, and it does not remove the need for permission where permission is required.

Operators lose by this as well as neighbours. Pursuing planning and licensing in parallel costs time and money, and a licence granted before the planning position is settled offers false security. Settling that position before a secondary-let licence is determined would give operators a sound basis for investment, and neighbours a decision they can rely on.

The Council’s report to Planning Committee on 9 September, drawing on its August licensing register, recorded 99 cases in which planning or lawful-use applications had been withdrawn after a licensing decision. That is a narrow measure. Independent analysis by Living Rent and Leith Harbour and Newhaven Community Council found 465 licensed short-term lets that had withdrawn a planning application before it was determined. Neither figure proves that a use is unlawful. Both show why the Council needs a reliable way of checking what happens next.

The view from the shared stair

The Cockburn Association has long argued that Edinburgh’s tenements call for particular care in the regulation of commercial short-term letting. Our consultation responses have stressed the communal nature of these buildings and the residential amenity that depends on it.

A tenement runs on cooperation. Owners have to organise repairs, sort out problems with common services and agree how shared spaces are used. Neighbours manage the ordinary business of living one above another, through a single front door.

A key safe fixed to the railings and the rattle of wheeled cases on the stair tell their own story. When the people in a flat change every few days and its management is conducted from elsewhere, questions about access, noise, rubbish and repairs become harder to resolve. Good management helps. It does not decide whether the use belongs there.

Safety matters too. The front door of a stair is the line residents rely on, and it weakens when the entry code is shared with a changing cast of guests. Many residents, and women and girls in particular, know the unease of coming home late and not knowing who they will meet on the stair. Feeling safe in your own close should not depend on whose flat has been let that night.

The pressure is greatest in the Old and New Towns, where holiday flats and permanent homes share the same stairs. The Old Town’s new Local Place Plan, prepared by the Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust with the Old Town Community Council, is blunt: the community has been “hollowed out by holiday lets”. Decisions taken flat by flat can shift the balance of a stair or a street without any single application appearing to change very much. It is the cumulative effect that matters.

Our interest in that balance follows directly from our conservation remit. People living in Edinburgh’s historic buildings are what keep them cared for and keep the city centre alive. Long-term tenants and owner-occupiers know their neighbours, look out for one another, share responsibility for common repairs and keep homes within reach of people who work in the city. A building can look exactly as it always has while the community around it has gone.

Enforcement needs capacity

Rules are only as good as the means of enforcing them.

The Council’s September report estimated that short-term lets accounted for around half of the planning enforcement team’s workload. It warned that a more proactive approach would need additional staff and could draw resources away from other breaches.

Officers cannot carry an expanding regulatory task on goodwill. Yet a system that waits for complaints shifts the burden onto residents, many of whom have already spent months following applications and reporting problems.

We would like to see a funded programme of targeted checks, starting with cases where permission has been refused, applications withdrawn or significant harm to residents identified. Residents should be able to find out who is responsible for following up, what stage has been reached and whether action is being taken.

Silence on a stair is not evidence that all is well. Where the Council already holds the information, it should act on it.

From the City Chambers to Holyrood

On 29 October, councillors agreed without division to ask the First Minister to strengthen the link between planning and short-term let licensing. The motion, brought by Councillor Neil Ross, proposed requiring formal confirmation that planning permission has been granted, or is not needed, before a secondary-let licence application can be declared valid and determined. The same principle would apply to renewals.

We welcome it. The Scottish Government should now bring forward a workable change that gives residents certainty and legitimate businesses a clear route to compliance.

Legislation alone will not be enough. Planning and licensing records should be linked, so that a refusal, withdrawal or appeal decision prompts a review of the property’s licence. Public reporting should distinguish between permission granted, lawful use established, applications pending and cases under investigation. A count of licences tells us very little about whether planning control is working.

Nor need the Council wait for Holyrood. It already has powers, and they should be used consistently, with clear priorities and the staff to carry them out. A call for better legislation carries more weight when the present system is being run well.

Keeping homes in the city

Tighter regulation will not solve Edinburgh’s housing crisis on its own, and not every flat leaving the holiday market will become an affordable home. The Council should measure what actually happens, including how many properties return to permanent residential use.

But keeping the homes we have matters as much as building new ones. Every effort to increase supply is undermined if avoidable losses from the existing stock go unchecked.

City Plan 2040 should treat these as a single question: where new homes are needed, how existing homes are kept, and how residential communities can survive in the places under greatest commercial pressure.

Visitors are part of Edinburgh’s life and economy, and their accommodation should be planned for. It should be planned within a system that gives proper weight to the people who live here all year round.

Residents have been asked to put their trust in planning controls and licensing working together. They now deserve evidence that they do, and that a planning refusal means what it says.

 

Further information and discussion

• Edinburgh Council: short-term lets—planning and licensing — the September 2026 report examining planning status, withdrawn applications and the resources needed for more proactive enforcement.
• Scottish Government: short-term lets regulation — an overview of licensing, planning control areas and enforcement, with links to detailed guidance for hosts and operators.
• Edinburgh Council: short-term lets in Edinburgh — practical information and routes to the Council’s licensing and planning services.
• Councillor Ross’s motion on the planning–licensing gap — the proposal submitted to the 29 October 2026 Council meeting, setting out the case for confirming planning status before a secondary-let licence is granted or renewed.
• Cockburn Association: “Who is a city for? Spain, Edinburgh and the price of success” — our recent discussion of housing pressures, tourism and the importance of retaining permanent residential communities.
• Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust: “We can’t eat whisky” — Edinburgh Old Town’s Local Place Plan — the September 2026 plan, prepared with the Old Town Community Council, setting out residents’ own account of the pressures on their community.
• Cockburn Association: short-term lets consultation response — the Association’s earlier position on tenements, residential amenity, management and enforcement.
• Edinburgh Evening News: “Edinburgh council to ask John Swinney to close loophole on short-term let licensing” — reporting on the Council’s decision and representations from residents and housing campaigners.

 

 

 

Photo: “Key safe” by Richard Webb, via Geograph, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.