16th
Sep 2022
Oxford council’s plan to target landlords who let out whole properties through Airbnb and other short lets platforms which will make it more expensive for them.
Oxford council which recently started a five year landlord licensing scheme across all of the city’s boundary, is now considering a proposal to levy a charge for waste collection at whole house short lets registered as businesses.
The intention follows in the wake of other councils such as Dorset, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Scarborough taking such action and means that owners of these types of properties will have to pay for bin collections.
It is more than likely that the council will approve the plan and subsequently contact the owners of short lets of whole houses who have registered as businesses, notifying them that they must agree to a commercial waste contract or have the properties’ waste bins removed by the end of December.
Council enforcement measures against non-compliancy will start next year.
The council, referring to the short lets monitoring service AirDNA, states that there are 1,591 active short let rentals in Oxford, and over half (55 per cent ) in total 869 are let out as entire properties.
So far 104 Airbnb type short let properties in Oxford are registered as self-catering businesses no longer pay council tax.
Currently short let properties have no need to be licensed and owners do not have to tell the council when their property has been made into a short let.
The council is claiming that it is extremely difficult to combat anti-social behaviour emanating from such properties as there is a constant ‘turnover’ of renters.
Over the last four years the council has repeatedly contacted the government demanding it to introduce some form of regulation of short lets, and says that councils should be given far greater powers to take quicker action rather than be reliant on complaints coupled with a time consuming enforcement process.
A council spokeswoman says: “We first called for powers to regulate short lets in 2018 because we believe the uncontrolled loss of permanent homes in the city to holiday letting accommodation will only exacerbate Oxford’s housing crisis.
“The government needs to act to ensure there’s a proper level playing field with the rest of the rental market and other highly regulated commercial businesses. Until then, we will continue to use our planning enforcement powers against unauthorised change of planning use class, and we are now removing this unfair advantage of free waste collection for whole house short lets that are registered as businesses. They will need to organise a commercial waste agreement contract just like other businesses in the city; it’s only fair as these properties avoid paying council tax.”
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