Question S5W-32143: Oliver Mundell, Dumfriesshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Date Lodged: 29/09/2020
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of its Programme for Government advising that plans for the Transient Visitor Levy have been put on hold due to COVID-19, and that “future consideration of the levy will take account of the changed context the industry is operating in”, for what reason a similar approach was not extended to its proposals on short-term let regulation. Current Status: Expected Answer date 27/10/2020
Kevin Stewart: COVID-19 has exacerbated and heightened existing tensions around short-term lets in certain areas. At the heart of our licensing scheme is a set of mandatory standards which will help to protect the safety of guests and neighbours in short-term lets across Scotland. Therefore, it is right that we are taking action in this session to move forward with these safety standards and address what is a pressing issue for some local communities.
Subject to the approval of the Scottish Parliament, the licensing scheme and control area regulations will be in force by April 2021. However, local authorities will have until April 2022 to establish a licensing scheme in their area and open it to receive applications. We are not placing additional requirements on hosts in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In due course, hosts will need to make an application for a licence to their local authority. However, existing hosts will be able to continue operating whilst their licence application is processed.
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish a business regulatory impact assessment to accompany its plans to introduce short-term let licensing and planning control areas.
Kevin Stewart: We are undertaking a Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) which will be laid at the Scottish Parliament with the statutory instruments for the short-term lets licensing scheme and planning control areas.
To ask the Scottish Government whether it has considered piloting its proposed short-term let regulations before implementation.
Kevin Stewart: We will not be piloting these proposals. We want to make progress in this Parliament to address a pressing issue for some of our communities and, to do this, we are aiming to lay secondary legislation in December. However, we will be encouraging and facilitating local authorities to learn from each other’s experiences in establishing control areas and operating a licensing scheme.
We will monitor and evaluate the impact of our proposals to ensure that they are effective and targeted. We are willing to bring a Bill to Parliament in the next session if we continue to see issues, but to do so now would result in unnecessary delay.
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason its short-term let consultation will be live for four weeks and not the standard 12, and what its position is on whether this timescale will allow stakeholders to properly engage with the process.
Kevin Stewart: The Scottish Government has been working on proposals for the regulation of short-term lets since 2018. We first consulted in summer 2019 for twelve weeks, and published the results of both that consultation exercise and the independent research we commissioned in October 2019. We announced our proposals for a licensing scheme, planning control areas and a review of taxation in January 2020. Unfortunately, work on implementing these proposals had to be suspended from March to July 2020 to deal with the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had originally planned for a longer period of engagement on our proposals in autumn 2020 but the timetable has had to be compressed in order to ensure that the secondary legislation could still be laid at the Scottish Parliament in this session.
We have set out detailed proposals for secondary legislation in this second consultation paper and, despite the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, officials are managing to hold effective virtual workshops with stakeholders representing all interests. These workshops are flushing out useful points for consideration and we had already received over 500 consultation responses on-line by close Monday 12 October.
We have to balance the need to have as fulsome consideration of the proposals as possible against the need to make progress, all in the context of a pandemic. On balance, we are not convinced that extra time is merited to consider the proposals further. We want to use the powers that we have to make progress in this Parliament to address this issue.
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason its short-term let consultation document makes no reference to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector.
Kevin Stewart: The Scottish Government has been supporting the tourism and hospitality sector through the pandemic in every way possible, given the limits of devolved power. We are planning for a recovery of the tourism sector. Regulation of short-term lets is part of ensuring a responsible and sustainable approach to tourism, which better balances the benefits of tourism with wider community needs and concerns. This regulation is important irrespective of COVID-19, which is why the detailed proposals make no reference to it. We have been engaging with a wide range of tourism and other stakeholders on our detailed proposals so that we can ensure they are robust but proportionate and fair.
Andy Wightman (Lothian) (Scottish Green Party): To ask the Scottish Government, further to the comment by the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning on 8 January 2020 that “we will review the tax treatment of short-term lets to ensure that they make an appropriate contribution to the communities that they operate in” (Official Report, c.37), what progress has been made with this review, and when the results will be published. (S5W-31815)
Kevin Stewart: Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we prioritised preparing the statutory instruments for the licensing scheme and short-term let control areas so that they can be considered by the Scottish Parliament in this session and deferred the review of the tax treatment of short-term lets. We are now considering how to complete the review in light of the evolving COVID-19 situation.