Every edition this year has covered a piece of the Renters' Rights Act framework — deposit protection, Section 8 grounds, the PRS Database, the Ombudsman. None of it applies to a genuine holiday let. That's not an oversight; it's a deliberate boundary in how English housing law is structured, and understanding exactly where that boundary sits matters enormously if you're a long-term landlord considering a switch, or a holiday let operator wondering whether any of this year's coverage applies to you.

This edition covers why holiday lets sit outside the assured tenancy framework entirely, the planning permission trap that catches landlords switching from long-term to short-term letting, the London 90-day rule, the incoming national registration scheme, and the tax change that's already reshaped the sums.

Every previous edition of this newsletter has dealt with assured tenancies and the Renters' Rights Act framework built around them. A genuine holiday let is not an assured tenancy at all — it falls under different legislation entirely, specifically excluded from the security of tenure provisions that give long-term tenants their protections.

That means no Section 8 grounds, no deposit protection scheme requirement in the same form, no PRS Database registration, no Ombudsman membership, none of the possession-blocking compliance gates covered across 35 editions this year. A holiday let guest is not a tenant with the statutory protections this newsletter has spent all year explaining — they're a licensee occupying under a holiday letting agreement.

The critical distinction is genuine holiday intent, not just short duration. A property genuinely let for holiday purposes — the guest has another home, the stay is for leisure, the letting pattern is seasonal and variable — sits outside the assured tenancy framework. A property let short-term but functioning as someone's only home, disguised as a "holiday let" to avoid tenant protections, does not. Courts and tribunals look at substance over form; mislabelling a de facto tenancy as a holiday let to sidestep everything covered in this newsletter is not a reliable strategy and can be successfully challenged.

This is where landlords considering a switch from long-term letting to Airbnb-style short lets most often get caught out, and it's a genuinely new mechanism that didn't exist a couple of years ago.

A new planning use class, C5 (short-term lets), was introduced via the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Regulations. Properties used as short-term lets for more than 90 days per year now fall within C5 rather than C3 (standard dwellinghouses).

What this means in practice: existing long-term rental properties in Class C3 converting to short-term lets require planning permission to change use to Class C5. This is not automatic and not guaranteed. Operating a short-term let without the required planning permission is an enforcement risk — a planning enforcement notice, a stop notice, or prosecution.

The important exception: primary residences let for short periods while the owner is away do not require planning permission — the property remains in Class C3. This exemption is specifically for owner-occupiers renting out their own home occasionally, not for landlords running an investment property as a holiday let year-round.

If you're a landlord reading this newsletter and considering converting an existing long-term rental into a holiday let to escape the compliance framework covered all year, the honest answer is that you may be trading one set of obligations for a planning permission requirement that is genuinely difficult to obtain in many areas — particularly given that some local authorities can designate areas where permitted development rights to switch between C3 and C5 don't apply at all.

London has its own long-standing rule that predates the new C5 use class entirely. Under Section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015, residential properties in Greater London can be let on a short-term basis for a maximum of 90 nights per calendar year without requiring planning permission for change of use.

The 90-day limit applies per calendar year, across all platforms combined, not per booking or per platform. Airbnb has voluntarily implemented an automatic 90-night cap on entire-home London listings, and other major platforms have followed, but using multiple platforms to combine bookings beyond 90 nights is still a planning breach — the automatic caps don't prevent you from exceeding the limit by using more than one platform, they just mean no single platform will let you exceed it alone.

If you want to let a London property short-term for more than 90 nights a year, you need a full planning application for change of use — and it's genuinely not guaranteed. Many London boroughs, particularly those with significant housing pressure, actively resist granting these applications given the loss of residential housing stock to short-term letting.

Room-only short-term letting — a spare room while you live in the property — is treated differently again, generally exempt from the 90-night cap, reflecting that this is a much smaller-scale, owner-present form of letting.

Short-term letting has been comparatively unregulated compared to the long-term sector this newsletter covers — but that gap is closing. From 2026, all short-term let hosts in England must register with the government's short-term let register before listing their property.

This creates a parallel registration obligation to the PRS Database covered in Edition 18 — a different scheme, for a different category of letting, but following a similar direction of travel: formal registration becoming mandatory across the entire private letting sector, not just assured tenancies.

If you operate a holiday let or short-term Airbnb, treat this the same way this newsletter has consistently advised landlords to treat the PRS Database — monitor the confirmed launch date and registration requirements as they're published, rather than waiting to discover the obligation exists after enforcement begins.

Separate from the planning and registration changes, a significant tax shift has already reshaped the financial case for holiday letting. Furnished Holiday Lettings (FHL) tax status was abolished in April 2025 — holiday let income is now taxed as standard property income, without the specific tax advantages that previously distinguished holiday lets from long-term rentals for tax purposes.

Meeting the old FHL criteria — at least 105 days of availability and 70 days of actual letting per year — no longer carries the tax benefit it once did, even though those figures can still be relevant indicators of whether a property is genuinely being run as a holiday let versus a long-term rental in substance.

The income uplift that holiday letting offers over long-term letting generally still exists before tax — the sums haven't been erased entirely — but the after-tax gap has narrowed since the FHL abolition, and higher-rate taxpayers with mortgage finance are the most affected by the change.

Even though holiday lets sit outside the assured tenancy framework, this doesn't mean no safety obligations apply. Holiday lets still require: mortgage lender consent (an ordinary buy-to-let mortgage typically does not permit short-term letting), specific holiday let insurance (standard landlord insurance, covered in Edition 35, is not designed for this use), an annual gas safety certificate, an EICR on the standard cycle, smoke alarms and CO detectors, and a fire blanket alongside other fire safety provisions appropriate to short-stay, unfamiliar occupants.

The safety-critical obligations covered across this newsletter's editions on gas safety, electrical safety, and smoke/CO alarms don't disappear just because the letting structure sits outside the assured tenancy framework — they're separate, general safety law that applies regardless of how the occupation is legally categorised.

✅ Confirm the letting is genuinely a holiday let in substance, not just in name — courts look at the reality of the arrangement, not the label on the paperwork.

✅ Check whether converting an existing long-term rental requires planning permission — Class C3 to C5 conversion is not automatic, and some areas restrict it entirely.

✅ If the property is in London, track your 90 nights across all platforms combined — the cap applies per calendar year, not per platform.

✅ Monitor the 2026 short-term let registration scheme — treat it with the same urgency this newsletter has recommended for PRS Database preparation.

✅ Confirm your mortgage permits short-term letting — an ordinary buy-to-let mortgage typically doesn't.

✅ Arrange holiday let-specific insurance — standard landlord insurance is not designed for this use, following the same logic covered in Edition 35.

✅ Maintain the same safety compliance as any let property — gas safety, EICR, smoke and CO alarms all still apply regardless of the letting structure.

✅ Recalculate the tax position post-FHL abolition — the specific tax advantages that used to distinguish holiday lets have gone; run the numbers again before assuming the same returns as before April 2025.

Holiday lets and genuine short-term letting occupy a different legal universe to everything else covered in this newsletter this year — no Section 8, no deposit protection scheme in the usual sense, no PRS Database, no Ombudsman. But that separation comes with its own increasingly formal set of obligations: planning permission for conversions, the London 90-day cap, an incoming national registration scheme, and safety requirements that never went away.

For long-term landlords eyeing a switch to escape the compliance landscape covered across 35 editions this year, the honest picture is that short-term letting has its own compliance landscape now too — younger, still forming, but no longer the lightly regulated space it once was.

Built for long-term assured tenancies and the compliance framework this newsletter covers — if you're weighing a switch to holiday letting, this is worth understanding before the conversion, not after.

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Coming up next edition — Section 13 vs contractual rent review: a refresher now that a full quarter has tested the new rules.

The Landlords Brief is published for UK landlords. Subscribe free at thelandlordsbrief.co.uk. This newsletter is for general information only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Planning and short-term letting rules vary significantly by local authority — always confirm with your specific council.