Hundreds of protected areas are under pressure from Scotland’s massive deer herd. Most agree deer numbers must be controlled to protect the environment, but are split on what should be done.
Edinburgh University students were “interrogated” by police at their desks over posters featuring Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, prompting dozens to complain.
Unsafe levels of faecal bacteria were recorded at dozens of Scotland’s best beaches this summer. Swimmers and paddlers could be at risk, but officials insist water quality remains high.
More than 90 per cent of applications to use residential properties as short-term lets in a Highland region in the midst of a housing crisis have been approved since last year, The Ferret can reveal.
Eighteen months after a short-term let control area was introduced in Badenoch and Strathspey – a tourism hotspot where pubs and restaurants are struggling to get staff due to a lack of affordable housing – just 29 applications to operate properties as short-term lets have been rejected, while 350 passed.
Our research has prompted claims from tenants’ rights campaigners that the current scheme to deal with the area’s housing crisis is “not fit for purpose”.
The figures from Highland Council starkly contrast with Edinburgh City Council – the only other part of Scotland with a control area, which is a policy designed to allow councils to limit the impact of holiday lets and Airbnbs.
In the Scottish capital, 71 per cent of short-term let applications have been rejected since a control area was introduced in September 2022.
Highlanders have warned of a “dire” situation in relation to affordable housing, in part driven by the proliferation of houses being used as short-term let accommodation.
A recent survey of Cairngorms residents found housing was their biggest concern, with 60 per cent of people finding it hard to find an affordable place to live.
Legislation permitting local authorities to apply to Scottish ministers to establish control areas was passed by the Scottish Parliament in January 2022, as part of changes which also included the creation of a short-term let licence regime.
In control areas, the use of a whole residential property for short-term lets, known as ‘secondary letting’, requires planning permission.
Edinburgh was the first council in which the Scottish Government signed-off on a control area and it immediately faced a legal challenge from short-term let operators.
The Court of Session found in June 2023 that certain aspects of the control area in Edinburgh were unlawful, including that it can be applied retroactively, leading the Scottish Government to issue new guidance.
The new guidance states that the control areas cannot apply retroactively. But if it is deemed that a dwelling needed planning permission before the control area was established due to ‘a material change of use’ in using a property for short-term letting, it will still need planning permission afterwards.
Specific criteria for deciding on what constitutes a material change of use was left to local councils to determine.
In December 2022, Scottish ministers approved a control area in the Badenoch and Strathspey ward of Highland Council, which includes popular tourist towns such as Aviemore and Grantown-on-Spey.
However, the control area did not come into force until March 2024 as Highland Council waited for the outcome of the Court of Session ruling and new Scottish Government guidance before developing its own criteria for the control area.
Analysing planning documents from Highland Council and Edinburgh City Council, The Ferret found a clear distinction in the criteria for planning decisions on short-term lets between the two control areas.
Edinburgh Council only issues a Certificate of Lawfulness (CoL), which clarifies that the property does not need to seek planning permission to continue operating as a short-term let, if the property can prove it has been in use continuously as a short-term let for over 10 years.
In the Badenoch and Strathspey control area, a CoL is issued if the property has three or fewer bedrooms and operated as a short-term let prior to the control area being established.
Highland Council will give planning permission to operate as short-term lets to properties with four or more bedrooms in the control area, regardless of whether they operated as short-term lets before the control area was introduced or not.
No such allowance for larger properties exists in Edinburgh.
In an online public consultation prior to the introduction of the Badenoch and Strathspey control area, a Highland Council planning department official said: “I don’t think we would be quite as stringent as Edinburgh appears to be, where they are essentially refusing most applications.”
Asked about why Highland Council had a more lenient approach to the control area than Edinburgh, a spokesperson said this was an unconfirmed “theory” and argued that differences in outcomes between the two control areas may be explained by their different characteristics as urban and rural areas, with Edinburgh having a high number of flats unlike Badenoch and Strathspey.
If 92 per cent of all applications are approved, there’s a complete lack of any meaningful control over the distribution of short term lets.
Louis McIntosh, Living Rent
It was also claimed by the spokesperson that the high number of CoLs issued in Badenoch and Strathspey for short-term lets was “based on the law, not planning judgement”.
The number of new short-term let applications is “low,” they said, adding they believed the control area was having a “deterrent effect”.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “It is for planning authorities to monitor and review the operation of their short term let control areas.”
Ariane Burgess, Green MSP for the Highland and Islands, told The Ferret that she was “concerned that Highland Council’s approach (to the control area) may not be doing enough to protect communities.”
Burgess, who is also party spokesperson for housing and rural affairs, added that the comparison with Edinburgh suggested that “the system isn’t being applied as strictly” in Badenoch and Strathspey.
“That risks letting more homes slip out of residential use, which is the opposite of what the policy is meant to achieve,” she added.
Louis McIntosh, Highlands organiser of Living Rent, the tenants union, claimed the findings proved that the Badenoch and Strathspey control area was “not fit for purpose”.
“If 92 per cent of all applications are approved, there’s a complete lack of any meaningful control over the distribution of short term lets”, she said.
The Ferret’s findings come in the context of wider tensions in Badenoch and Strathspey over planning decisions, especially in Aviemore, a tourist hotspot.
In August, Scottish Ministers overruled the advice of its own planning reporter, who recommended that planning permission for an extensive property development in Aviemore, including an 83-bedroom hotel and 22 short-term let apartments, be refused.
The development had been widely opposed in the town, including by local activist and software developer John G. Burns. He said the fact that short-term let apartments do not fall under the remit of the control area – because they are new properties and not subject to requirements to include affordable housing – was “a loophole” that should be closed.
Burns, an SNP branch organiser, claimed that Aviemore faced a “dire” situation when it came to affordable housing, which had a major knock-on effect on the local workforce.
“You’ll regularly go onto the village Facebook page and someone will say ‘I’m doing an internship at the hospital or at the ambulance station, can you help me find somewhere to live?’,” said Burns.
Pubs and restaurants are disappearing here. For a place that lives from tourism, it’s really not good.
John G. Burns, local activist and software developer
His local pub, The Ski-ing Doo, which stopped serving food recently due to a lack of staff, announced on 2 September that it was closing down, in part due to rent hikes of 60 per cent in the last year.
“Pubs and restaurants are disappearing here,” Burns added. “For a place that lives from tourism, it’s really not good.”
Another complainant about the new Aviemore development is Gordon Bulloch, a member of the Cairngorms Campaign, which opposes ‘unsustainable, damaging developments’.
Bulloch told The Ferret that the 22 new short-term let apartments “made a mockery” of the control area and that developers had found a way “to dodge their commitments” when it comes to affordable housing.
“It’s a failure of our planning system,” he argued. “The planners should stand-up to developers and say, ‘sorry no, this must be a mixed development, and a portion of these must be residences and they must be affordable.’”
In June, it was reported that some councillors are considering the idea of a short-term let control area for the whole of the Highlands.
One of those is Labour councillor Michael Gregson, who told the Ferret that tighter controls over short-term lets in the Highlands are necessary.
“Despite the relatively small proportion of short-term lets, there are serious and negative consequences where over-provision in specific areas has removed available longer-term rental housing stock, leading to higher rental prices,” Gregson said.
Main image: Gordon Bulloch
Hundreds of protected areas are under pressure from Scotland’s massive deer herd. Most agree deer numbers must be controlled to protect the environment, but are split on what should be done.
Edinburgh University students were “interrogated” by police at their desks over posters featuring Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, prompting dozens to complain.
Unsafe levels of faecal bacteria were recorded at dozens of Scotland’s best beaches this summer. Swimmers and paddlers could be at risk, but officials insist water quality remains high.
Footage of farmed trout suffocating, haemorrhaging, and being beaten with batons in a slaughterhouse has prompted an official complaint to a government regulator.
