Short-term let licences fell by 9% across the eleven most pressured communities this year, the first annual decline since the licensing scheme began.
The policy has, on its own terms, worked. Licensing was intended to give councils control over the growth of short-term letting and it has slowed it.
The properties, however, did not return to housing.
Where they went
Of 340 licences surrendered or not renewed across the eleven communities, follow-up identified the current status of 291.
Twenty-two returned to the long-term rental market. Nine were sold to owner-occupiers. The remaining 260 became second homes: still owned by the same person, still empty for most of the year, and no longer requiring a licence, an inspection or a fire risk assessment.
“We regulated the version of it that involved paperwork, so people moved to the version that does not. The house is still empty. It is just empty more quietly now.”
A housing campaigner in the west
The council tax point
Second homes attract up to double council tax, and the affected councils have collected additional revenue as a result. Several have used it to fund affordable housing, which is the intended mechanism and is real money.
The difficulty is scale. The premium on 260 properties in one authority raises a sum that would fund, on current build costs in remote areas, between three and four houses.
Where 291 former lets went
- Long-term rental: 22
- Sold to owner-occupiers: 9
- Became second homes: 260
- Council tax premium raised, one authority: enough for 3–4 houses
- Net change in occupied dwellings across the eleven: +31
The lesson people keep drawing
Almost everyone interviewed made the same point, including two who supported the licensing scheme and still do.
Regulating a use does not create a home. The only intervention in this series that has demonstrably produced occupied houses in a pressured community is a trust building them and holding them, and that has happened in three places, and each took the better part of a decade.
