Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)

My Lords, as mentioned previously in Committee, I declare my interest as a landlord and former long-term tenant in the private rented sector. I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, on short lets requiring planning consent for properties to be converted into short-term lettings. As your Lordships’ House would expect, the noble Lord, Lord Best, has made the case convincingly. His Majesty’s Government should include this amendment in the Bill, because there is an undoubted link between the reduced availability of long lets, especially for local residents, and the exponential rise in Airbnb and other short-let platforms. A register, while welcome, will mainly chart the huge and expanding nature of this part of the PRS, which is already having such a deleterious effect on the provision of long-term accommodation for locals and their communities. The Minister may say this amendment is not a matter for the Bill, but it is. The Bill will accelerate the trends of short lets and reduce long lets unless amended. By introducing periodic tenancies with a minimum two-month notice period, it will simply introduce another class of short lets protected by law and destabilise the long-term lets market. The PRS has not grown in the last nine years, as I mentioned previously in Committee. The Bill, by prohibiting upfront rental payments and fixed-term tenancies, will lead to evermore landlords moving to short lets. This trend is completely ignored by the Bill but will follow as surely as night follows day. Tenants will be able to give two months’ notice on day one under the proposed legislation. Why should they do that? Because long lets are up to four times cheaper than short lets in, for example, the London Borough of Camden. Once tenants move in, the length of their tenancy will be impossible to police. If tenants move out after only a month rather than the minimum two, how will that be monitored and by whom? It will result in widespread short lets by the back door. A tourist could simply move into what was previously a long let, give two months’ notice and save thousands of pounds. It would just take a little fib on the part of the tenant. A landlord will have no way of knowing a tenant’s real intentions under periodic tenancies, so will put up the rent, assuming that all long lets can become short lets. The distinction between short and long lets will disappear, with implications for rent levels. Neither the prohibition of mutually agreed fixed-term tenancies nor advanced rental payments were in Labour’s election manifesto, so I am at a loss to understand why these two essential measures to provide stability and certainty to the market have become non-negotiable. The majority of tenants want fixed terms, so I fail to see why HMG think they know better than the tenants themselves. Reducing the supply of long lets as ever more landlords gravitate towards more profitable short lets will mean that rents will assuredly go up, not down, and the losers will be the tenants, especially local residents and their sense of community. The noble Lord, Lord Best, mentioned London and Devon. I have quoted before how some London housing blocks have become over 90% Airbnb or similar short lets. Local residents are squeezed out. Devon is a county I know well; I am a Devonian. The noble Lord, Lord Best, quoted the example of Salcombe, Devon’s answer to Saint-Tropez. Similar cases can be quoted throughout the West Country and Wales, including Cornwall. However, as the noble Lord said, it is not just coastal resorts and historic cities such as Bath, which I also know well, and York, that are affected. Areas around Birmingham have also become short-let hotspots. Of course, it is not only the UK. Airbnb and the like have reached saturation point in Spain, in cities such as Barcelona and on Tenerife. It has become so bad, with locals priced out of accommodation, that tourists have been assaulted in restaurants and on beaches. As I mentioned, short lets are far more profitable for landlords than long lets. Airbnb and other short-let platforms are becoming increasingly dominated by professional landlords, as regulation is either non-existent or very light-touch. By way of comparison, long-let residential property is already governed by 170 laws and regulations. The attractions for landlords to move to short lets is obvious and will be enabled by this Bill. Apart from the further regulatory and legal provisions in the Bill, long-let landlords will be asked by HMRC to make quarterly tax returns by April 2026, and new EPC regulations could cost anything up to £15,000 per property. Estate agents must report long-term rentals to HMRC in this country. Airbnb and the like do not, and I suspect that tax evasion is rampant. Renting out flats or rooms on Airbnb or other short-let platforms undermines long-term rentals, legitimate B&Bs and smaller hotels, all of whom must pay taxes, abide by a host of regulations, employ local people and support local economies. With more and more remote professional landlords, Airbnb does none of that. The idea that Airbnb and other similar platforms allow a few grannies to innocently rent out their spare rooms is far from the true picture. The impact of short lets is also pernicious. They undermine any sense of community, create nuisance for full-time residents and can be a security risk for blocks of flats, with Airbnbers having raucous parties and coming and going at all hours of the night and day. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, research has found that half of London’s 117,000 short holiday lets are being rented out illegally. In Westminster, where over 50% of residents live in rented property, council leader Adam Hug has said that short lets “can hollow out long-term residents, making neighbours subject to significant noise disruption, fly-tipped waste linked to short-term let properties”. In 2015, there were fewer than 30,000 short lets in London. This more than doubled throughout 2016, peaking at over 100,000 in 2019. As Tom Copley, Sir Sadiq Khan’s London Deputy Mayor for Housing, said, “we need to bring those properties back into use as long-term rented properties or long-term properties for people to buy and live in as owner-occupiers”. This Bill as drafted will legalise ever more short lets, as tenants will be able to legally move out of a property after just two months. I had experience of an Airbnb rented flat in a block where short lets were banned under the lease. The owner was fully aware of this fact and kept denying the property was rented out on Airbnb, despite the property being advertised openly on the website. Airbnb takes no action in these situations. In our case, it took over two years for the owner to be forced to abandon Airbnb, despite his flat being the only short let in the block. People were coming and going every few days, and wear and tear on the communal areas and concern for security were considerable. The only action which reined in the current leaseholder was a threat by the excellent managing agent to go to court to get him to forfeit the lease. HMG have previously said this option will be banned, so I wonder how such situations could be resolved in the future. I would retain the nuclear option of forfeiture but exclude it for debt and other relatively minor transgressions.