Lord Young of Cookham (Con)

My Lords, I too have added my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, and want to add a very brief footnote to the two speeches that have already been made. It is at times like this that we miss the contribution of the late Baroness Gardner of Parkes, who many of us will remember intervening forcefully whenever short-term lettings were mentioned, reminding us of the erosion of rented property in London, but also, as the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, mentioned, some of the problems in large blocks of flats when short-term tenants cannot conform to the normal rules. What we need here is a balance. There is a role for short-term lettings and Airbnb to play as part of a portfolio of opportunities in a coastal resort or, indeed, in a capital city. But what we have at the moment is a one-way street of erosion of long-term property for rent into short-term lettings. If we are to have a balance and get it right, it should be the local authority which should be in a position to strike that balance. I am sure the Minister, as a distinguished leader of a local authority, would agree that local authorities are best placed to do this. I think I am right in saying that, until fairly recently, you actually needed planning permission to move from long-term to short-term letting, but, in a move to deregulate and make it easier to move from one use class to another, that requirement to get planning consent to move from one use to another was waived in the 2010 or 2015 Parliament, apart from in London. It was retained in London, and only in London, where, if you want to short-term rent a property, you can only do so for 90 days—a rule that is ineffective unless it is enforced, and many local authorities find it difficult to enforce . What this amendment seeks to establish is whether the Government are minded to extend from London to other parts of the country that type of restriction to stop what is, at the moment, a one-way street. I just add a rider to what the noble Lord, Lord Best, has suggested. If you need planning consent to go from long-term to short-term, I do not think you ought to need planning consent to go back the other way. In other words, it should be a hurdle to get over, but if you want to revert to long-term renting, you should not have to go through the process again. If one looks at various parts of the country, in some coastal areas, one in 10 homes are now short-term lets or second homes. Roughly 24 homes a day are being lost through this process, so I hope the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically to the thrust of this Bill, and say that there are plans to give local authorities the powers that I think they need to get the right balance in the tenures in their area.