Council's embarrassing climbdown over short-term lets - Sue Webber

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative Lothian MSP

Not for the first time City of Edinburgh Council has its tail between its legs with the embarrassing climbdown over short-term lets (STLs).

At Monday’s Regulatory Committee the authority formally abandoned its presumption against any STL licences in tenements and shared main door properties after a successful legal challenge. Now the onus is on the council to demonstrate why applications should be rejected, not for applicants to justify themselves.

What was remarkable about the meeting was that the convener, Lib Dem councillor Neil Ross, had to spell out what should have been the correct approach in the first place, that there should be no insurmountable barriers to prevent responsible owners from operating well-run businesses.

“While recognising many landlords take care in choosing tenants and look after them properly, and have respect for their neighbours, this council will not give up on residents negatively impacted by the anti-social behaviour, noise and disturbance of some tenants and the inadequate and ineffective management of some landlords,” he said. Nor should it, but putting even exemplary operators out of business was the point of the original policy, not raising standards.

There’s no question that anti-social behaviour is a problem with so-called party flats, but this requires adequate resources to tackle it at the time, with the resulting evidence used to shut down rogue operators. But that’s almost impossible when the police don’t have enough resources as it is.

We can’t lose sight of the fact the scorched earth approach threatened the viability of the productions thousands of us are enjoying at the Fringe and Festival just now, because a default ban would mean far fewer affordable places for casts and crews to stay. As the court ruling pointed out, the planning application system is there to prevent inappropriate use of properties, a much more appropriate way to prevent over-provision in stairwells.

Councillor Ross blames the court for making it difficult to regulate STLs, but the council has no-one to blame but itself for trying a legal stunt to close most of them down. Now the process is so onerous it should be no surprise that some owners choose to ignore it altogether, with someone just seeking to rent out a room in their house facing upfront fees of around £2,000 to obtain the necessary safety certificates as well as the application cost.

Tougher Scottish Government regulations go beyond Edinburgh, and I heard this week it has even sucked in Gullane residents who rent out their very well-appointed homes to professional golfers competing at the Scottish Open. It is so complex that Edinburgh Council’s instructions are contradictory, with a requirement to maintain property to the “repairing standard”, which the 2006 Housing (Scotland) Act says does not apply to holiday accommodation.

If the council was genuinely serious about improvement rather than prohibition it would focus on hot-spots with regular inspections, not a blanket assault on every single STL operator across the city.

In the meantime council inspection of the run-down guest houses it uses for homeless people ─ when it has 1,500 council houses lying empty ─ is scant to say the least. If there is one part of the accommodation market badly in need of rigorous standards, then it’s the grubby B&Bs families facing an emergency are too often forced to endure.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative Lothian MSP