Item9Appendix1ShortTermLetNonStatutorySTLControlAreaPlanningPolicy

Cairngorms Item 9 Appendix 1 26 Janu­ary 2024 Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Agenda item 9

Appendix 1

High­land Coun­cil Non-stat­utory short term let con­trol area plan­ning policy

The High­land Coun­cil Com­hairle na Gàid­healtachd Devel­op­ment Plans

HIGH­LAND COUN­CIL NON-STAT­UTORY SHORT-TERM LET CON­TROL AREA PLAN­NING POLICY

Ver­sion. 1.4 Date. Novem­ber 2023

1.0 Intro­duc­tion

This non-stat­utory plan­ning policy relates to the use of a dwell­ing­house as a short-term let with­in a Con­trol Area.

The pro­vi­sion of all oth­er tour­ist accom­mod­a­tion both in and out of a Con­trol Area will remain to be con­sidered under exist­ing policies, par­tic­u­larly NPF4 Policy 30 & HwLDP 44. The Stat­utory Devel­op­ment Plan needs to be read in the whole and it is for the decision maker to con­sider the weight of indi­vidu­al policies.

Dwell­ing­houses: Once a Con­trol Area has been des­ig­nated the pro­posed use of a dwell­ing­house as a short-term let will auto­mat­ic­ally require plan­ning per­mis­sion. If a mater­i­al change of use occurred before the Con­trol Area was des­ig­nated and the exist­ing use doesn’t already have plan­ning per­mis­sion; or a cer­ti­fic­ate of law­ful use; or the evid­ence to sup­port a cer­ti­fic­ate of law­ful use applic­a­tion; or is not immune from enforce­ment action, then plan­ning per­mis­sion will be required.

Prop­er­ties oth­er than Dwell­ing­houses: The need for plan­ning per­mis­sion for the use of prop­er­ties oth­er than dwell­ing­houses for short-term letting/​tourist accom­mod­a­tion will not change as a res­ult of a Con­trol Area being estab­lished. Plan­ning per­mis­sion will con­tin­ue to be required if the pro­posed change of use is con­sidered to be mater­i­al. If a mater­i­al change of use occurred before the Con­trol Area was des­ig­nated and the exist­ing use doesn’t already have plan­ning per­mis­sion; or a cer­ti­fic­ate of law­ful use; or the evid­ence to sup­port a cer­ti­fic­ate of law­ful use applic­a­tion; or is not immune from enforce­ment action, then plan­ning per­mis­sion will be required.

It is import­ant to note that the Licens­ing of short-term lets is sep­ar­ate to the Plan­ning pro­cess and a Licence is likely to be required even if plan­ning per­mis­sion is not. Fur­ther inform­a­tion is avail­able on Coun­cil webpage¹.

Applic­ants are encour­aged to seek pre-applic­a­tion advice on pro­pos­als before sub­mit­ting a plan­ning applic­a­tion: https://​www​.high​land​.gov​.uk/​i​n​f​o​/​2​0​5​/​p​l​a​nning — policies advice and ser­vice levels/785/pre- application_advice

2.0 Stat­utory Devel­op­ment Plan Policy

Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4: Policy 30. (Tour­ism) a) Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als for new or exten­ded tour­ist facil­it­ies or accom­mod­a­tion, includ­ing cara­van and camp­ing sites, in loc­a­tions iden­ti­fied in the LDP, will be supported.

b) Pro­pos­als for tour­ism related devel­op­ment will take into account:

1 https://​www​.high​land​.gov​.uk/​i​n​f​o​/​2​0​0​2​1​/​short term lets

i. The con­tri­bu­tion made to the loc­al eco­nomy; ii. Com­pat­ib­il­ity with the sur­round­ing area in terms of the nature and scale of the activ­ity and impacts of increased vis­it­ors; iii. Impacts on com­munit­ies, for example by hinder­ing the pro­vi­sion of homes and ser­vices for loc­al people; iv. Oppor­tun­it­ies for sus­tain­able travel and appro­pri­ate man­age­ment of park­ing and traffic gen­er­a­tion and scope for sus­tain­ing pub­lic trans­port ser­vices par­tic­u­larly in rur­al areas; v. Access­ib­il­ity for dis­abled people; vi. Meas­ures taken to min­im­ise car­bon emis­sions; vii. Oppor­tun­it­ies to provide access to the nat­ur­al environment.

c) Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als that involve the change of use of a tour­ism-related facil­ity will only be sup­por­ted where it is demon­strated that the exist­ing use is no longer viable and that there is no require­ment for altern­at­ive tour­ism-related facil­it­ies in the area.

d) Pro­pos­als for huts will be sup­por­ted where the nature and scale of the devel­op­ment is com­pat­ible with the sur­round­ing area and the pro­pos­al com­plies with rel­ev­ant good prac­tice guidance.

e) Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als for the reuse of exist­ing build­ings for short term hol­i­day let­ting will not be sup­por­ted where the pro­pos­al will res­ult in: i. An unac­cept­able impact on loc­al amen­ity or the char­ac­ter of a neigh­bour­hood or area; or ii. The loss of res­id­en­tial accom­mod­a­tion where such loss is not out­weighed by demon­strable loc­al eco­nom­ic benefits.

3.0 Non-Stat­utory Short-term Lets with­in a Con­trol Area Plan­ning Policy

With­in a Con­trol Area, the use of exist­ing dwell­ing­houses as a short-term let will be expec­ted to meet the require­ments NPF4 Policy 30 e).

The pro­vi­sion of all oth­er tour­ist accom­mod­a­tion in a Con­trol Area will remain to be con­sidered under NPF4, par­tic­u­larly Policy 30, the High­land-wide Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan², and with­in the Cairngorm Nation­al Bound­ary the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan³.

With­in a Con­trol Area, the Coun­cil will sup­port the use of an exist­ing dwell­ing­house as a short-term let that falls with­in one of the fol­low­ing categories:

1. It is a long-term empty dwell­ing­house that will be brought back into act­ive use. Sup­port­ing evid­ence will be required to be sub­mit­ted to demon­strate this.
2. The dwell­ing­house is loc­ated above a com­mer­cial unit with­in a City, Town or Vil­lage centre.

2 https://​www​.high​land​.gov​.uk/​i​n​f​o​/​1​7​8​/​local and stat­utory devel­op­ment plans/199/high­land- wide loc­al devel­op­ment plan 3 https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​p​l​a​n​n​i​n​g​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​/​l​d​p​-​2021/ Page 2 of 5

1. The dwell­ing­house has no few­er than four bed­rooms, as it exis­ted at the date of the des­ig­na­tion of the Con­trol Area or, if con­struc­ted after the des­ig­na­tion of the Con­trol Area, as ori­gin­ally built.

When assess­ing the ​‘impact on loc­al amen­ity or the char­ac­ter’ (NPF4 Policy 30.e)ii.) & ​‘adverse impacts upon neigh­bour­ing uses’ (HwLDP Policy 44), the Coun­cil will include con­sid­er­a­tion of the following:

• Pri­vacy • Amen­ity • Park­ing pro­vi­sion • Com­mer­cial waste stor­age space and col­lec­tion point • Neigh­bour­ing land uses

4.0 Defin­i­tions

For the pur­pose of this non-stat­utory plan­ning policy, the fol­low­ing terms and phrases are defined as follows:

‘bed­room’ excludes rooms which are con­sidered as liv­ing or din­ing rooms. All bed­rooms must be no smal­ler than 6.51 square metres (70 square feet) and must include one glazed open­ing that is equal to at least 1/​15th of the floor area of the room;

‘Con­trol Area means a short-term let con­trol area estab­lished as such under sec­tion 26B of the 1997 Act, as amended by the Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 2019;

‘dwell­ing­house’ means an inde­pend­ent dwell­ing (with its own front door, kit­chen and bath­room) being accom­mod­a­tion which ordin­ar­ily affords the facil­it­ies required for day-to-day private domest­ic exist­ence such as a house, flat, cottage4;

‘long-term empty’ means a dwell­ing­house that has been registered as empty for 2 years or more on the Coun­cil Tax List;

‘short-term let’within a Con­trol Area, means a prop­erty fall­ing with­in the defin­i­tion con­tained in Sec­tion 26B of the 1997 Act and The Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Short-term Let Con­trol Areas) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions, as amended. Put very simply: when accom­mod­a­tion not occu­pied by its own­er is offered for hol­i­day rent­al in return for pay­ment to someone unre­lated to the own­er, then that prop­erty falls with­in the short-term let defin­i­tion. Examples of accom­mod­a­tion that could fall with­in the defin­i­tion of a short-term let depend­ing on how it is being occu­pied and to whom it is being ren­ted out, include: pods, yurts, shep­herd huts, dwell­ing­houses, prop­er­ties con­ver­ted into liv­ing accom­mod­a­tion etc.

Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997, as amended — 26B Mater­i­al change of use: short-term lets (3) For the pur­poses of this sec­tion, the fol­low­ing ten­an­cies do not con­sti­tute a short-term let-

4 Plan­ning Cir­cu­lar 10/2009: Plan­ning Enforce­ment Page 3 of 5

(a) a private res­id­en­tial ten­ancy under sec­tion 1 of the Private Hous­ing (Ten­an­cies) (Scot­land) Act 2016, (b) a ten­ancy of a dwell­ing­house (or part of it) where all or part of the dwell­ing­house is the only or prin­cip­al home of the land­lord or occupier.

The Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Short-term Let Con­trol Areas) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions, — Reg­u­la­tion 2 (as amended) provides as follows:

Short-term let (1) For the pur­poses of sec­tion 26B of the Act, and sub­ject to sec­tion 26B(3) of the Act, a short-term let is provided where all of the fol­low­ing cri­ter­ia are met— (a) sleep­ing accom­mod­a­tion is provided in the course of busi­ness to one or more per­sons for one or more nights for com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tion, (b) no per­son to whom sleep­ing accom­mod­a­tion is provided is an imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­ber of the per­son by whom the accom­mod­a­tion is being provided, (ba) the accom­mod­a­tion is not provided under an excluded ten­ancy, © the accom­mod­a­tion is not provided for the prin­cip­al pur­pose of facil­it­at­ing the pro­vi­sion of work or ser­vices to the per­son by whom the accom­mod­a­tion is being provided or to anoth­er mem­ber of that person’s house­hold, (d) the accom­mod­a­tion is not provided by an employ­er to an employ­ee in terms of a con­tract of employ­ment or for the bet­ter per­form­ance of the employee’s duties, and (e) the accom­mod­a­tion is not excluded accommodation.”

Reg­u­la­tion 1 defines ​“excluded ten­ancy” as: (a) a 1991 Act ten­ancy (with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 1(4) of the 2003 Act), (b) a mod­ern lim­ited dur­a­tion ten­ancy (with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 5A of the 2003 Act), © a short lim­ited dur­a­tion ten­ancy (with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 4 of the 2003 Act), (d) a stu­dent res­id­en­tial ten­ancy, (e) a ten­ancy of a croft (with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 3 the 1993 Act), (f) a ten­ancy of a hold­ing situ­ated out­with the croft­ing counties (with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 61 of the 1993 Act) to which any pro­vi­sions of the Small Land­hold­ers (Scot­land) Acts 1886 to 1931 applies.

‘Tour­ist accom­mod­a­tion’ means a build­ing that is reg­u­larly or occa­sion­ally used for sleep­ing accom­mod­a­tion for tourists/​visitors. Page 4 of 5