CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper I 25^th Feb­ru­ary 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: CNPA RESPONSE TO HIGH­LAND COUN­CIL PRO­POS­ALS FOR A SHORT TERM LET CON­TROL AREA FOR BADENOCH AND STRATHSPEY

Pre­pared by: GAV­IN MILES, HEAD OF STRA­TEGIC PLANNING

Pur­pose

This paper sum­mar­ises the High­land Council’s pro­pos­als for a Short Term Let Con­trol Area cov­er­ing Badenoch and Strath­spey and the pro­posed CNPA response to the form­al consultation.

Recom­mend­a­tions

That the Board:

a) Wel­come High­land Council’s pro­pos­als for a Short Term, Let Con­trol Area cov­er­ing Badenoch and Strath­spey as anoth­er tool to help man­age the avail­ab­il­ity of hous­ing for people work­ing in the Nation­al Park in the long term; and

b) Note the implic­a­tions for the CNPA when act­ing as the plan­ning author­ity and endorse officers con­tin­ued work with High­land Coun­cil col­leagues on the devel­op­ment of more detailed plan­ning policy to accom­pany proposals.

Back­ground

1. The Town & Con­trol Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997 was amended in its last review to provide loc­al author­it­ies with the power to des­ig­nate ​‘Short Term Let Con­trol Areas’. In late 2021, the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Short Term Let Con­trol Areas) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2021 were imple­men­ted which define a short-term let and set out the pro­cess for des­ig­nat­ing a ​‘Con­trol Area’. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Cir­cu­lar 1/2021 provides guid­ance on the imple­ment­a­tion of the reg­u­la­tions. The pro­posed Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 – 2027 that was con­sul­ted on dur­ing 2021 included object­ives, actions and policy sup­port­ing the intro­duc­tion and use of Short Term Let Con­trol Areas to help max­im­ise the avail­ab­il­ity of hous­ing for res­id­ents and workers.

2. Fol­low­ing a request by all of High­land Council’s Badenoch and Strath­spey Ward Mem­bers, on 9 Septem­ber 2021 High­land Coun­cil agreed that the Coun­cil would pur­sue the con­sid­er­a­tion of estab­lish­ing a Short Term Let Con­trol Area across the Badenoch & Strath­spey Ward (Ward 20). High­land Council’s Badenoch and Strath­spey Ward is almost entirely with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

3. On 2 Decem­ber 2021 High­land Council’s ECI Com­mit­tee agreed to pur­sue the estab­lish­ment of pur­sue the estab­lish­ment of the Short Term Let Con­trol Area for Badenoch & Strath­spey fol­low­ing a detailed report from officers set­ting out the avail­able evid­ence to sup­port one and the pro­cess by which to estab­lish it. The con­sulta­tion on the pro­posed Short Term Let Con­trol Area star­ted on 31 Janu­ary 2022 and runs until 7 March 2022.

The Pro­pos­als

1. The con­sulta­tion doc­u­ments are avail­able on High­land Council’s web­site here: Short-Term Let Con­trol Area | Short-term Let Con­trol Area | The High­land Coun­cil. The State­ment of Reas­ons for the pro­posed Short Term Let Con­trol Area is included as Annex I to this paper and provides a clear and simple explan­a­tion of the pro­pos­al and the avail­able evid­ence to jus­ti­fy it. The more com­pre­hens­ive report of 2 Decem­ber 2021 to High­land Council’s ECI Com­mit­tee is avail­able here: Eco­nomy and Infra­struc­ture Com­mit­tee | The High­land Coun­cil.

2. The cre­ation of the Short Term Let Con­trol Area will mean that the use of a dwell­ing­house for sec­ond­ary let­ting will be con­sidered to be a ​‘mater­i­al change of use’ which will require plan­ning approv­al. It will allow plan­ning policies to be used to assess applic­a­tions which change the use of a dwell­ing­house to a short-term let­ting prop­erty. The pub­lic have the oppor­tun­ity to make rep­res­ent­a­tions on plan­ning applic­a­tions to change use in the same way as for oth­er plan­ning applications.

3. The require­ment for plan­ning per­mis­sion will only apply to changes of use of dwell­ing­houses. It will not apply to long-term rent­als, Bed & Break­fasts, rent­ing out indi­vidu­al rooms/​annexes if the owner/​occupier resides in the dwell­ing­house, second homes where no sec­ond­ary let­ting is done or accom­mod­a­tion built spe­cific­ally for hol­i­day pur­poses, such as pods, annexes and hol­i­day chalets. The Scot­tish Government’s sep­ar­ate pro­pos­als for the licen­cing of all form of short term let­ting prop­erty will apply to them in future: Short-term lets legis­la­tion approved — gov.scot.

4. Once a Short Term Let Con­trol Area has been estab­lished in Badenoch and Strath­spey, all dwell­ing­houses that meet the defin­i­tion of a short term let prop­erty (estim­ated to be up to 500 prop­er­ties) will require to either apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion for their use, or where the prop­erty has been used con­sist­ently for sec­ond­ary let­ting for peri­od of ten years of more, apply for a Cer­ti­fic­ate of Law­ful­ness of Exist­ing Use or Development.

5. The cur­rent con­sulta­tion peri­od runs until 7 March 2022. Fol­low­ing the con­sulta­tion, High­land Coun­cil officers will ana­lyse the responses and pre­pare a sum­mary report for Coun­cil along with any detailed pro­pos­als for the Short Term Let Con­trol Area.

Implic­a­tions

Policy Devel­op­ment

1. The cre­ation of the Short Term Let Con­trol Area is not a ban on short term let­ting. It simply means that a dwell­ing­house will require to have plan­ning per­mis­sion for that use or to change to or from a dif­fer­ent use. Decisions on applic­a­tions will require to

2. be based on plan­ning policy and any oth­er mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions. Plan­ning policy in Badenoch and Strath­spey is foun­ded on rel­ev­ant nation­al plan­ning policy and that of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2021 (LDP 2021) when inside the Nation­al Park and the High­land-Wide and Inner Moray Firth Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plans out­side the Nation­al Park Boundary.

3. All the rel­ev­ant Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plans pre-date the Short Term Let Con­trol Area legis­la­tion. While the LDP 2021 has policies that con­tain rel­ev­ant mater­i­al for decisions (Policy 1: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment, Policy 3: Design and Place­mak­ing), it does not have policies expli­citly designed to man­age the use of dwell­ing­houses as short term let prop­er­ties. It is likely that the CNPA as the respons­ible author­ity for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan cov­er­ing most of the area and High­land Coun­cil as the loc­al author­ity and pro­moter of the Short Term Let Con­trol Area, will need to pre­pare addi­tion­al plan­ning guid­ance on how applic­a­tions will be con­sidered and the rel­ev­ant mat­ters that will be taken into account in decisions. This involves more work for officers in both CNPA and High­land Coun­cil, though it is com­par­able with the work both for­ward plan­ning teams under­take on a routine basis.

4. In addi­tion, the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan provides the stra­tegic con­text for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and can be a mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tion in plan­ning decisions. Officers will explore wheth­er addi­tion­al detail on rel­ev­ant con­sid­er­a­tions is provided through the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

Devel­op­ment Man­age­ment Decisions

1. The require­ment for plan­ning applic­a­tions to estab­lish the use of a dwell­ing­house as a short term let­ting prop­erty will cre­ate addi­tion­al work for the plan­ning author­ity. Ini­tially this may cre­ate a sig­ni­fic­ant addi­tion­al work­load if large num­bers of prop­er­ties are required to make plan­ning applic­a­tions. The major­ity of applic­a­tions would be expec­ted to be determ­ined by High­land Coun­cil, on the basis of the rel­ev­ant policy cov­er­ing the area. The CNPA would have the abil­ity to call in applic­a­tions that were con­sidered to raise issues of sig­ni­fic­ance to the aims of the Nation­al Park, though in prac­tice these applic­a­tions fall into the scale where they would be unlikely to be called in.

Impacts on the Hous­ing Market

1. There have been sig­ni­fic­ant num­bers of short term let­ting prop­er­ties with­in Badenoch and Strath­spey for many years and they have been and will con­tin­ue to provide an import­ant ele­ment of vis­it­or accom­mod­a­tion and driver of the vis­it­or eco­nomy. Nev­er­the­less, one of the under­ly­ing reas­ons for estab­lish­ing a Short Term Let Con­trol Area in Badenoch and Strath­spey is that there is short­age of sup­ply of hous­ing for people work­ing in the area. The things that lim­it that sup­ply of hous­ing include high house prices gen­er­ally through com­pet­i­tion from people buy­ing prop­erty for short term let­ting and second homes, reduced num­bers of prop­er­ties avail­able for longer term occu­pa­tion because of increased ten­ancy rights, high­er stand­ards of build­ing effi­ciency and safety, high­er yields from short term let­ting, as well as a lim­ited sup­ply of new houses being built that are guar­an­teed to meet the loc­al need and demand.

2. It is not pos­sible to fully quanti­fy the effect of the Short Term Let Con­trol Area on the exist­ing hous­ing mar­ket, but officers anti­cip­ate that in the short-term, the complex

3. nature of the hous­ing mar­ket and the rel­at­ively lim­ited applic­a­tion of the Short Term Let Con­trol Area with­in it mean it is unlikely to res­ult in a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in num­bers of short-term let prop­er­ties. How­ever, in the longer term, the Short Term Let Con­trol Area should help lim­it the leak­age of hous­ing from new devel­op­ments to short term let­ting uses which will be a con­sid­er­able advantage.

4. It is worth not­ing that the Short Term Let Con­trol Area will not pre­vent people from buy­ing or own­ing second homes nor influ­ence how they use them unless they let them on a short term basis. A pos­sible con­sequence of a Short Term Let Con­trol Area is that prop­er­ties where a short term let­ting use is refused become second homes that are used less and con­trib­ute less to the loc­al economy.

Con­clu­sion

1. Short Term Let Con­trol Areas are one of the tools avail­able to help man­age the hous­ing mar­ket to sup­port loc­al com­munit­ies, but need to be con­sidered in the con­text of oth­er tools such as invest­ment in new afford­able and mid-mar­ket hous­ing that remains so in per­petu­ity, future arrange­ments for licens­ing of all short term let prop­er­ties, and the powers avail­able to influ­ence second home own­er­ship and use. No single tool cur­rently avail­able is likely to solve the issue of avail­ab­il­ity of hous­ing for people liv­ing or work­ing in the Nation­al Park, but used togeth­er, they have poten­tial to make a sig­ni­fic­ant improvement.

2. Officers recom­mend the Board respond to High­land Council’s pro­pos­als for a Short Term Let Con­trol Area cov­er­ing Badenoch and Strath­spey by wel­com­ing the approach as anoth­er help­ful tool to man­age hous­ing pres­sures in the area and that the Board note the future implic­a­tions for the CNPA act­ing as plan­ning author­ity and in pre­par­ing plan­ning policy and guid­ance for the Badenoch and Strath­spey part of the Nation­al Park.

Gav­in Miles Feb­ru­ary 2022 gavinmiles@​cairngorms.​co.​uk