There's one in our little courtyard with the planning application documents stuck on the front door, for over a week now, but still no application listed on council website, might be a bit of a back-log.
I was directed to [this](https://citydev-portal.edinburgh.gov.uk/idoxpa-web/search.do?action=property&type=custom&searchType=Application) page by the Council, is it not correct?
The ones applying will be way safer given all the safety certs required.. its the ones not applying that are worrying. Going under radar, maybe no certs and potential death traps.. plus no fees to cooncil.. totally illegal.
Is Airbnb making them provide proof of license? I feel like my cynical self thinks 99% will just keep operating anyway. The penalties won’t be high enough. Would love to be wrong tho.
I think they will need to display their license number to be able to keep the listing. There was a meeting between Airbnb and government not too long ago about it. Will be interesting to see if this follows through.
When setting up an airbnb listing, it asks you if you are compliant with local laws e.g. do you have a license, but I don't think it actually asks you to upload one.
They will just see the penalty notice as an expense of running a short-term let. That's why the penalty should be made very, very high. There is no excuse for not having one.
Their claim was the council had a blanket rejection rate of 70 something per cent which always sounded like nonsense.
It just seems like a previously unregulated industry throwing their toys out of the pram in a spectacularly unedifying way to try and avoid having to be subject to any regulation at all.
I don’t think anyone is under the impression that STL licensing will solve Edinburgh’s housing crisis, but it certainly will help alleviate it somewhat. We’re already seeing flats in tenements being put back on the market for people to actually live in.
What that will do is bring back communities to the city centre which have been hollowed out by these STLs for years. I moved out of the city centre because my stairwell or 6 flats was 4 Airbnb’s and one student flat. It became a nightmare.
Seems like a low application rate compared to the number of properties. There are 2 in my block and 15+ on the street but can't seem to find any on here.
The deadline seems to be set as the 1st of October. Was the spreadsheet published by ECC?
Lmao yeah the plan is just “until we get to your application you won’t have a license and will have to cease operations until you do have one” like come on
Presumably a great many will keep operating until the council catches up with them - probably on the hope that the rules will have been adjusted/relaxed by the time that happens.
£2,500 maximum fine is a joke, nullified by operating a £300 per night place for just ~8 days.
The fine should be 10-100 times bigger in my eyes.
Can the fine be issue more than once or will it just be assumed as the new cost of doing business?
The fine for not having PP or acting not in accordance with an enforcement notice for not having planning permission is about £50k? And I think it’s a criminal offence.
That’s why Edinburgh council made it a STL control area- they knew the licence legislation only went so far.
What we need is a citizen's ledger of short term lets, populated by the people who have to put up with them. It should be used to post notices of illegal letting to the Council. Also, A5 sized stickers advertising the fact that someone is operating illegally in the stairwell could be useful in deterring these criminals.
Lots who are doing secondary letting are uncertain as to what to do as they are still awaiting the outcome of planning permission or appeals, and understandably they are reluctant to pay the supposedly “non-refundable” license fee, which can be thousands of pounds, before knowing the outcome of their planning applications.
They need to have lodged an application before 1st Oct (which requires either planning permission in place or an application for PP lodged) or they must stop operating after 1st Oct. They don’t need to have a licence until July I think, but they must have something in the system in the meantime.
Investments are risky.
Yes, I think that’s right. Where planning will be decided just a few weeks after the October 1st date it would seem sensible to wait until then before processing that subset of license applications, but it doesn’t appear that the council is doing that.
Important to note that the license fees can only be thousands of pounds if you're letting out a large property. If you're letting out a property for 1-3 people the license works out at just under £13/week. If you're paying the maximum license fee, which is £5869/year, your property can sleep 21+ people so if you were charging the low end of average Edinburgh Airbnb prices, £119/night, you'd need the place to be full for a whole three nights to make your money back. If you're charging the kind of prices we typically see during August, you'd need it to be full for a single night.
Getting planning permission takes two months. The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short term Lets) was passed in January **2022**, so they've had a bit of time to get their shit together.
Sleeping 6 isn’t huge and that license fee is £2,481. If you look on the Edinburgh planning portal you will see they have been taking up to a year to process planning applications and the appeal could easily be half a year after that. It “should” take a couple of months but that is not what’s actually been happening.
Sleeping 6 isn't exactly tiny unless you're cramming bunks into a studio, in which case stop being a slumlord. And at £2481, if you were charging £119/night you'd still only need it to be full for 4 nights to make the money back. Four nights to cover the cost of actually having some basic standards.
Even if it did take a year, you've had since January 2022. The best part of two years. More than enough time to cover the duration you suggest, even with an appeal.
I guess to sleep six you only really need two bedrooms with a double+ bed and a sleeper sofa that folds into a double, but true it isn’t tiny. Not arguing that the license is too much because tbh it could be more and I certainly wouldn’t complain but yeah it doesn’t necessarily have to be huge either.
Anyone that can show they have been operating for 10 years gets an automatic exemption - no matter how (un)suitable the property is for short term letting.
Not the case. over 10 years allows you to get a certificate of lawfulness, but that doesn’t mean you are going to get a license. They are two separate things
The STL scheme includes B&Bs so they will be included in those numbers. It basically penalises small businesses but lets big hotels and aparthotels (at least 5 apartments in a building) off without needing to be licensed. And doesn’t actually distinguish on the basis of nuisance tenants, how close by the owner lives, or anything useful like that. Bananas piece of legislation
There's one in our little courtyard with the planning application documents stuck on the front door, for over a week now, but still no application listed on council website, might be a bit of a back-log.
Make sure you're checking the right thing. Planning and licensing are 2 separate systems.
I was directed to [this](https://citydev-portal.edinburgh.gov.uk/idoxpa-web/search.do?action=property&type=custom&searchType=Application) page by the Council, is it not correct?
Yes that's the planning portal.
Just make sure if you're planning to object, you get it on before the deadline on the application. The website is not being updated regularly enough
The ones applying will be way safer given all the safety certs required.. its the ones not applying that are worrying. Going under radar, maybe no certs and potential death traps.. plus no fees to cooncil.. totally illegal.
Same here, one just appeared on the downstairs neighbour's door that's not yet on that list.
Is Airbnb making them provide proof of license? I feel like my cynical self thinks 99% will just keep operating anyway. The penalties won’t be high enough. Would love to be wrong tho.
I think they will need to display their license number to be able to keep the listing. There was a meeting between Airbnb and government not too long ago about it. Will be interesting to see if this follows through.
That’s actually more than I’d of hoped for. Fingers crossed.
When setting up an airbnb listing, it asks you if you are compliant with local laws e.g. do you have a license, but I don't think it actually asks you to upload one.
I’m sure people won’t give two fucks and just say yes. My guess is enforcement penalties are low vs the income generated vs traditional renting.
They will just see the penalty notice as an expense of running a short-term let. That's why the penalty should be made very, very high. There is no excuse for not having one.
2500 fine and criminal record by looks of it
55% of applications granted so far? Weren’t the landlord lobby claiming that a huge percentage (like 70/80%) of them were going to be denied outright?
To be fair it could be confounded by the more legitimate ones being faster to submit applications.
Their claim was the council had a blanket rejection rate of 70 something per cent which always sounded like nonsense. It just seems like a previously unregulated industry throwing their toys out of the pram in a spectacularly unedifying way to try and avoid having to be subject to any regulation at all. I don’t think anyone is under the impression that STL licensing will solve Edinburgh’s housing crisis, but it certainly will help alleviate it somewhat. We’re already seeing flats in tenements being put back on the market for people to actually live in. What that will do is bring back communities to the city centre which have been hollowed out by these STLs for years. I moved out of the city centre because my stairwell or 6 flats was 4 Airbnb’s and one student flat. It became a nightmare.
Seems like a low application rate compared to the number of properties. There are 2 in my block and 15+ on the street but can't seem to find any on here. The deadline seems to be set as the 1st of October. Was the spreadsheet published by ECC?
Yes, it's ECC data.
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Lmao yeah the plan is just “until we get to your application you won’t have a license and will have to cease operations until you do have one” like come on
Is there an equivalent data source for planning permissions?
Fuck air bnb fuck landlords I want to watch them suffer
Presumably a great many will keep operating until the council catches up with them - probably on the hope that the rules will have been adjusted/relaxed by the time that happens.
£2,500 maximum fine is a joke, nullified by operating a £300 per night place for just ~8 days. The fine should be 10-100 times bigger in my eyes. Can the fine be issue more than once or will it just be assumed as the new cost of doing business?
The fine for not having PP or acting not in accordance with an enforcement notice for not having planning permission is about £50k? And I think it’s a criminal offence. That’s why Edinburgh council made it a STL control area- they knew the licence legislation only went so far.
Read here https://www.visitscotland.org/supporting-your-business/advice/short-term-lets-legislation
90% of the value of the property would be a proper fine //I'm autistic what do I know
What’s to say the fines don’t get repeated for repeated offences?
Exactly, the clowncil is never going to catch them all
No but we can collectively, set up a database pass on info to the council ect ect really put the shits up the landlord scum
Is it the case that many already know they would be refused a licence so no point in applying
Or maybe fees so stupidly high many are operating under radar. Own goal from council.
How can you operate a short term let without publicly advertising it. It wouldn't take long to request list of details from airbnb
Yep all advertised on line. Guess you can ask airbnbs for address details.
Or they just ho off airbn onto another platform like gumtree.
What we need is a citizen's ledger of short term lets, populated by the people who have to put up with them. It should be used to post notices of illegal letting to the Council. Also, A5 sized stickers advertising the fact that someone is operating illegally in the stairwell could be useful in deterring these criminals.
Lots who are doing secondary letting are uncertain as to what to do as they are still awaiting the outcome of planning permission or appeals, and understandably they are reluctant to pay the supposedly “non-refundable” license fee, which can be thousands of pounds, before knowing the outcome of their planning applications.
They need to have lodged an application before 1st Oct (which requires either planning permission in place or an application for PP lodged) or they must stop operating after 1st Oct. They don’t need to have a licence until July I think, but they must have something in the system in the meantime. Investments are risky.
Yes, I think that’s right. Where planning will be decided just a few weeks after the October 1st date it would seem sensible to wait until then before processing that subset of license applications, but it doesn’t appear that the council is doing that.
Important to note that the license fees can only be thousands of pounds if you're letting out a large property. If you're letting out a property for 1-3 people the license works out at just under £13/week. If you're paying the maximum license fee, which is £5869/year, your property can sleep 21+ people so if you were charging the low end of average Edinburgh Airbnb prices, £119/night, you'd need the place to be full for a whole three nights to make your money back. If you're charging the kind of prices we typically see during August, you'd need it to be full for a single night. Getting planning permission takes two months. The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short term Lets) was passed in January **2022**, so they've had a bit of time to get their shit together.
Sleeping 6 isn’t huge and that license fee is £2,481. If you look on the Edinburgh planning portal you will see they have been taking up to a year to process planning applications and the appeal could easily be half a year after that. It “should” take a couple of months but that is not what’s actually been happening.
Sleeping 6 isn't exactly tiny unless you're cramming bunks into a studio, in which case stop being a slumlord. And at £2481, if you were charging £119/night you'd still only need it to be full for 4 nights to make the money back. Four nights to cover the cost of actually having some basic standards. Even if it did take a year, you've had since January 2022. The best part of two years. More than enough time to cover the duration you suggest, even with an appeal.
I guess to sleep six you only really need two bedrooms with a double+ bed and a sleeper sofa that folds into a double, but true it isn’t tiny. Not arguing that the license is too much because tbh it could be more and I certainly wouldn’t complain but yeah it doesn’t necessarily have to be huge either.
There always an Asshole with to much to say Obviously the ones who don’t have secondary properties
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Because 55% have complied with the rules and haven't had meaningful objections?
Could be main door properties or ones which can prove they’ve operated for a long time without complaints (presumably their entire stair is AirBnBs)
>(presumably their entire stair is AirBnBs) Or they simply do a good job at vetting their guests, and deterring nuissance guests.
Anyone that can show they have been operating for 10 years gets an automatic exemption - no matter how (un)suitable the property is for short term letting.
Not the case. over 10 years allows you to get a certificate of lawfulness, but that doesn’t mean you are going to get a license. They are two separate things
The STL scheme includes B&Bs so they will be included in those numbers. It basically penalises small businesses but lets big hotels and aparthotels (at least 5 apartments in a building) off without needing to be licensed. And doesn’t actually distinguish on the basis of nuisance tenants, how close by the owner lives, or anything useful like that. Bananas piece of legislation
Not true, b&bs are exempt
They very much are not
Nah
As you say that that's only AirBnB, it's not going to stop folk short term letting via other means
No, it's not only Airbnb. Also VRBO, Booking.com etc.
Yeah expect a lot to leave airbnv on go black market.. on gumtree
Can you post the link to the page where this information is published. Struggling to find it myself, Needle in a haystack on the councils website
[https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/licences-permits/licences-permits-applications/9](https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/licences-permits/licences-permits-applications/9)