Trade Group Urges Highland Council to Halt Let Zone Expansion

Highland Council is facing pushback over plans to extend its short-term let control area, with an industry group representing Scotland's self-catering sector arguing the authority should assess the impact of its existing rules before widening them further.

What a control area actually requires

Highland was among the first Scottish councils to designate a short-term let control area, doing so in 2022 under powers that let local authorities require planning permission for any change of use to short-term letting, even where a host already holds the national short-term let license that has been mandatory across Scotland since October 2023. Inside a control area, letting out a second home or a property that is not someone's main residence on a short-term basis becomes a planning matter, not just a licensing one. Operators who fall foul of it can be ordered to stop trading or face enforcement action, on top of whatever conditions their license already carries.

Why operators want a pause, not an expansion

The trade group's objection is not to short-term let control areas in principle but to widening one before anyone has measured what it has done. Its argument is that Highland's rural tourism economy leans heavily on self-catering income in places where hotel capacity is thin, and that piling planning refusals on top of licensing costs risks pushing operators out of the market faster than it protects housing stock. The group wants the council to publish evidence on how the current zone has affected both housing availability and visitor numbers before deciding whether to extend it to new areas.

What this means for hosts operating in or near Highland

Anyone letting a secondary property inside the existing control area already needs planning permission in addition to a license, and anyone in an area the council adds to the zone would face the same requirement going forward, likely with limited transition time once a decision is confirmed. Operators considering new short-term let purchases in the region would be wise to check a property's status against the current control area map before assuming a license alone is enough to trade legally, since planning refusal can override a license that has already been granted.

Highland Council has not set out a timeline for when it will decide on expansion. Scotland's national licensing scheme, introduced by the Scottish Government, was itself controversial for the compliance costs it placed on small operators, and this dispute adds a second, locally controlled layer of restriction that other Scottish councils weighing their own control areas will be watching closely.