Following today’s Scottish Government announcement to introduce a new regulatory scheme for short term lets, the Leader of the City of Edinburgh Council Adam McVey welcomes the news that our call for new legislation has been successful.

He said: “Today’s announcement by the Minister is extremely welcome news and will give us the controls that we need over short term lets for our residents and communities across Edinburgh.  It meets our request for mandatory licences and we will now be in a position to more effectively implement planning controls to stop this increase. A review of taxation in this area will also make sure that businesses are paying properly for income they’re receiving and local services they’re using.

“In 2018, we set up a working group to look at this in detail and provide recommendations, the main one being the need for a regulatory system. Since then we’ve been working closely with the Scottish Government on the implementation of a new regulatory system, so I’m delighted that we’ll now be able to take this forward, and soon.

“This news also comes on the back of our successful campaign to introduce a tourist tax which will also make sure that visitors to the city are financially contributing to the services that they use. All of which, are part of a package of measures to better manage the enormous success of our tourist economy.

“We’ll now work with the Scottish Government on the details of the new system which I hope will allow us to react quickly when rules are breached as well as addressing the particular challenges we face in Edinburgh such as housing being taken out of supply, rising rents and anti-social behaviour.

“Next week we will also set out how we propose to tackle this issue through the introduction of new planning policies in our consultation document ‘Choices’ for the next local development plan City Plan 2030.”