Our guide to the English Holiday Home Registration Scheme (and why it’s good news)

There have been many changes to regulations in the recent months, which can he tricky to navigate. With that in mind, our Managing Director, Phil Beattie, has shared our take on the most recent Holiday Home Registration Scheme – and why there may be a greater opportunity at play for those who’re already operating in a professional way.

An Explanation of the English Holiday Home Registration Scheme

The holiday home registration scheme is widely something that most professional owners and agencies have supported since it was first discussed a number of years ago.  The simple reason for this is that the scheme will create a fair and level playing field for all accommodation providers to ensure that their accommodation is safe and legal.

Luxury Coastal has been a longstanding member of the Professional Association of Self Caterers (PASC) as they are great source of insight and updates and things that impact our industry.  We are always happy to share some of the is information we learn with you to keep you looped into the conversations that are happening.

There are many legislative changes facing the self-catering industry that are being discussed or in the process of being rolled out that we keep an eye on and help provide lobbying support and feedback on.  It must be said not all the changes are negative and one change that will happen in the next 18 months will be registration scheme in England.

Other schemes have been used in Scotland and Wales with varying levels of success and the English registration scheme seems to have taken learnings from the devolved nations and looked to make the process more pragmatic whilst still delivering the desired result.

A big driver for the scheme is a huge lack of clarity around the actual numbers of holiday homes across England, as most figures quoted in government are the number of properties listed on Airbnb and VRBO combined.  We know that many properties listed on Airbnb are also listed on VRBO and many properties have multiple listings on Airbnb and VRBO too.  It is expected there will be a huge overstatement in the numbers being used.

The emergence of Airbnb means that a home owner can let a room or whole property out with no real checks in place about whether the accommodation is safe and legal to do so. Therefore a casual holiday home landlord can let their property without what most consider to be the cornerstone of self-catering safety, a valid fire risk assessment, a gas safety certificate and appropriate holiday home insurance.

The proposed registration scheme will mean without a registration number, which can only be gained by submitting the appropriate safety documents and paying what is expected to be a nominal fee, property owners will not be legally allowed to advertise their property for holiday rental.  This will include on platforms such as Airbnb, Booking.com, and VRBO where an input field is already in place for the registration number to be entered.

As an agency our properties are all safe and legal so we know there will be no issues but it is expected that this requirement will see a significant number of casual holiday lettings exit the market.  The expectation is that the supply of holiday let property will reduce in the months following the schemes roll out with the demand we current see staying the same.

We are also expecting that once there is a list of registered properties across the country, many of the figures being used by the government and press in their depiction of the industry and its size will need to be downsized significantly as it will be based on registered properties and not a count of listings.

In conclusion the registration scheme is expected to remove many of the bad actors and casual holiday home landlords that have entered the industry over recent years and reduce the supply of properties we see at the moment.  With demand expected to remain roughly the same in the coming year or two there will be the same number of guests utilising a smaller number of properties, which we would expect to have a good impact on the overall performance of our holiday homes.  The scale of the industry will also be understood in greater detail than ever before. Optimistically this could reduce the perceived impact that holiday homes have on local housing issues and shift some of the focus onto other causes.