Half of London’s short-term let properties rented out illegally

The Government is being urged to take action after new research has found that more than half of London’s short-term holiday let properties are being rented out unlawfully.

A report by Central London Forward — a partnership of inner city boroughs — found that more than 50 per cent of the short-term lets listed across Greater London in 2024 were booked for more than 90 days in a year, meaning they were in breach of regulations.

“Of the total 117,000 short-term lets listed across London in 2024, 67 per cent were concentrated within the 12 boroughs which make up the central London sub-region. This creates a concentrated impact on local housing markets, and a loss of housing stock for long-term residents,” states the report.

Speaking at the Centre for London think tank’s annual housing summit on Wednesday, Westminster City Council leader Adam Hug said his borough is “at the epicentre of the problem”, with short-term lets concentrated in “the West End, Bayswater, Lancaster Gate and parts of Pimlico”.

He added: “This concentration has a profound effect on our local communities, which can [include] hollowing out long-term residents, making neighbours subject to significant noise disruption, fly-tipped waste linked to short-term let properties.

“But it also impacts the council services which have to pick up the waste, respond to the noise complaints and deal with pressure in the local housing market, as we see private rents rise year on year.”

Central London Forward’s report, which follows up on an earlier report published in January, points out that the number of short-term lets in London has soared over the last decade: “Data shows that in 2015, there were fewer than 30,000 short-term lets in London. This more than doubled throughout 2016 to 60,000, peaking at over 100,000 in 2019.

“Numbers of short-term lets then dramatically fell in 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, before making a steady recovery.”

The report calls on ministers to force short-term let rental websites “to share individualised, unit-level data with local authorities and the Government” and to introduce a mandatory national registration scheme for the sector.

“At the moment, it isn’t possible for local authorities to effectively, at scale, enforce the existing regulations,” said Hug, who claimed holiday let websites will often “mask where the properties are, putting it on a street a couple of roads away, and not being clear what building it’s in”.

The Labour councillor added: “It means that hard-pressed planning enforcement teams are really struggling to build the evidence base to get the court to enforce the 90-day rule.

“In order to better regulate the market, and to empower local authorities, we really do need national Government to step up.”

The report was endorsed by Tom Copley, Sir Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor for housing, who said regulations have become “completely inadequate”, as boroughs “have an enforcement power that in practice they are unable to exercise”.

He added that with 65,000 homeless households in London living in temporary accommodation, “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”.

Approached for comment, a Government spokesman told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The short-term let sector has seen rapid growth in recent years. This can bring economic benefits to the economy and tourism industry, but we know that having excessive concentrations of short-term lets in an area can drive up housing costs and harm local communities.

“That’s why we have abolished the furnished holiday lets tax regime so that landlords are no longer incentivised by the tax system to rent homes as holiday lets, and why we will introduce a short-term let registration scheme that will enable us to reap the benefits of a thriving tourist economy while protecting the spirit of our communities. We continue to consider further action.”

Central London Forward: Short Term Lets in Central London Report (pdf).

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