More than 2,600 properties are being probed for breaking short-term letting rules in a single London borough after reports of wild parties, brothels and tourists dumping rubbish.
Westminster council has doubled the size of its investigation team following a growing number of complaints, the town hall revealed on Thursday.
The borough has the highest number of short-term lets in the country at around 13,000, with the number continuing to climb since the end of the pandemic.
Council officials warned that entire residential blocks are now effectively virtual hotels with most of the homes for rent on popular websites, such as Airbnb and Booking.com.
Some blocks, such Park West off Edgware Road, have more rooms available to rent on a nightly basis than the Ritz hotel.
Westminster council leader Adam Hug said: “Illegal and poorly managed short-term lets can make residents miserable with anti-social behaviour (ASB) and noise issues.
“Which is why we got to grips with the short-term-lets enforcement team we inherited, to crack down on illegal nightly lettings and resolve cases faster within the constraints posed by the Conservatives disastrous 2015 deregulation.
“The short-term lets team work with our empty homes officer, city inspectors and Environmental Health teams to take a whole council approach to enforcement.
“We are now doubling the size of the short-term lets team we inherited, while the Government makes long-overdue progress on regulating the sector that should come to fruition in the months to come.”
Four full-time council investigators will now be tasked with tackling Westminster’s problem.
Officers will talk to neighbours and look out for “telltale clues”, the town hall said.
These include combination key boxes outside of premises, cleaners arriving regularly, large amounts of rubbish not being put in the right place for collection and “excessive noise complaints or parties held on a regular basis”.
In London homeowners need planning permission to use a property as a holiday let if it is rented out for more than 90 nights a year.
Airbnb, the most well-known short-term lets business, has said that a typical London property on its app is rented for just a few nights a month and it had partnered with local authorities to investigate rule breakers.
However there are a plethora of different websites where properties can be listed and bookings made, meaning landlords can easily skirt around the 90-day rules.
The Government last year promised a new mandatory national register for short-term lets to help councils track the number in their areas.
