Housing: Rental Market

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

As I said a moment ago, outside London there is no restriction on what home owners can do with their homes. They can let them on a series of short-term lets. Precisely to protect the stock in London we have a 90-day rule to prevent the leakage of rented accommodation for Londoners wholly into the tourism market. We will look at the issue again, if the noble Lord insists—but, as a former MP for a London seat, I will need some convincing that we have not got the balance about right at the moment.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

Can I try to convince the Minister with the statistic that longer than 90-day lettings in London have increased by 23%? Given this, the Government must increase the funding for local authorities in order to enforce the rule. We may have a 90-day rule in London but there has been a vast increase in people advertising lettings of over 90 days, and trading standards are no good at enforcing the rule in all but one or two London boroughs.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

It would be for planning departments rather than trading standards to enforce the rule. The Government have recently announced that planning authorities can increase their fees by up to 20% precisely to give them the resources they need, among other things, to enforce planning legislation.