A Glasgow home-owner planning to let their flat as short-stay accommodation has lost an appeal against a council decision which ruled the use was “unlawful”.
Angel Sancho Medina urged the Scottish Government to overturn Glasgow City Council’s ruling, after planning officials rejected a request for a certificate of lawful use.
The applicant wanted to use their three-bedroom flat on Clutha Street as a short-term let when they are away from home, but council staff said the proposal would be “unlawful” without planning permission.
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A reporter, appointed by the Scottish Government, backed the council position, dismissing the appeal, and found the use could “create tensions with long standing residents within the close”.
A planning official had reported “not enough information” had been provided by the applicant, but he had estimated “the rental of the property as short-term let would ideally be four months a year (around 33% of the year) but more realistically 3 months a year (25% a year)”.
There is a “large gap” between the figures and potential for “intensification of the use” of the flat, the official stated. “The flat is proposed to be rented to a maximum of four people at a time, this could potentially imply that 48 people would visit the flat a year.
“This new influx of visitors is considered to potentially create conflict with long-term residential neighbours.”
They ruled the plan would “most likely involve a change of use from residential flat to short-stay accommodation” and require a planning application.
In the appeal, the home-owner “stressed that I will only be renting my property as a whole, to a single household unit” for a maximum of 3 weeks at a time.
They disputed the council’s 48 people per year figure, describing it as “very much unlikely as it means the flat will be rented all the time only to families with two children”.
“I do not agree that renting to another family, which most probably would leave in the morning and come back in the evening, will create constant circulation around the block,” the appeal added.
It stated the applicant believed the request was within the council’s rules on short-term lets.
However, the reporter, Andrew Fleming, decided there would be a material change of use which “would not be lawful without the express grant of planning permission”.
He stated the appellant had acknowledged “it is difficult to determine precisely how frequently and for how long the appeal property would be rented out”.
There is “a degree of ambiguity surrounding the appellant’s intentions”, the reporter added, but he considered the use based on it “being rented out for three weeks every 4 months”.
That would mean 48 people could visit in 12 months and “would result in an increased influx of transient visitors” as well as a “pattern of arrivals and departures by guests which is untypical of how one would expect a residential property to be used”.
The use could “create tensions with long standing residents within the close”, the reporter ruled.
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