Oxford City Council has won its latest planning appeal banning the use of a property for short let accommodation.
On 29 November 2023, the Council issued a planning enforcement notice against the owner of a property in New High Street, Headington, being used as a short let. The property is widely known as the Headington shark house.
This followed a complaint from a member of the public about a change of use to short let accommodation.
The owner appealed to the Planning Inspectorate, which has now dismissed the appeal and required the owner to stop using the property as a short let from 11 March 2025.
Comment
“I’m pleased the Planning Inspectorate has found in our favour again and banned the use of this property as a short let. Once again, it’s been a lengthy process which shows the urgent need for councils to have proper powers to deal with problems caused by whole-house short lets.”
“It’s amost impossible to say how many much-needed homes Oxford has lost to short lets because the sector is still virtually unregulated. What we do know is there are nearly 3,500 households on our waiting list and that short lets can cause misery in our communities.
“The last government promised reform and then dropped the ball. The time for change is long overdue.”
Councillor Linda Smith, Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities
The problem of short lets
The rise of websites like Airbnb and Vrbo has led to a rapid increase in the number of short lets in Oxford in the last decade.
The last publicly available data from AirDNA in July 2023 recorded 1,325 short lets in Oxford, with 765 (58%) of these let as entire properties. The true figures now are likely to be significantly higher.
The increase in renting out entire properties for all or most of the year has resulted in the loss of valuable homes in the UK’s most unaffordable city.
Meanwhile, there are nearly 3,500 households on the waiting list for social housing in Oxford.
In the worst cases, short lets have been used for illegal or antisocial purposes. Short lets are often in quiet residential neighbourhoods. The strain this causes can be immense.
The short-let sector is virtually unregulated. This means the Council has little power to enforce standards it requires for other rented accommodation.
It is also difficult to tackle issues like antisocial behaviour and nuisance when there is a stream of different people using a property,
The Council has taken successful planning enforcement action in cases where owners changed the use of a house into a short let without planning permission.
However, this is a lengthy process which relies on people making complaints about individual properties.
Since 2018, the Council has repeatedly lobbied for powers to put whole house short lets on a level playing field with other privately rented and commercial tourist accommodation – including a mandatory registration licensing scheme, run and enforceable by councils.
Mandatory registration would ensure owners meet minimum safety standards. It would make investigating complaints significantly easier and allow the Council to set conditions addressing local needs or concerns – like restricting noise levels at night.
In extreme cases, it would provide the Council with wider and easier-to-use powers to act against the illegal use of short lets.
The Council has also lobbied for the introduction of a new planning class for short lets, which would allow it to restrict their numbers and location and for enforceable conditions to be applied where necessary. While the previous government proposed making a new use class in February 2024, this is yet to be introduced in planning law.
This would help prevent the loss of much-needed housing and reduce adverse impacts on local communities.
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