North Berwick Residents Push Council to Rein In Holiday Lets

Residents of North Berwick, the East Lothian coastal town roughly 25 miles east of Edinburgh, have gone public with demands that the local council act to slow the conversion of cottages into short-term holiday lets, arguing the trend is stripping the town of homes for people who actually live there.

What residents are asking for

The complaint is a familiar one in popular UK coastal and heritage towns: period cottages near the harbor and high street, once family homes or long-term rentals, are being bought up and switched to nightly letting to serve weekend and summer visitor demand. Residents say the shift is squeezing an already tight local housing market and changing the character of streets that were previously residential year-round. They want East Lothian Council to use its existing powers to slow or reverse the trend rather than leave the market to sort itself out.

How Scotland already regulates short-term lets

Scotland's national licensing scheme has been mandatory since October 1, 2023, requiring every short-term let host to register with their local authority and meet safety conditions covering things like gas, electrical checks and fire detection. Separately, councils have the power to declare short-term let control areas, which require planning permission before an entire home can be switched to holiday letting, on top of the license itself. Edinburgh used that power first, designating the whole city a control area from September 2023, and has since refused a substantial number of license applications for whole-property lets in tenement buildings.

What a control area would mean for hosts

East Lothian Council has not declared a control area covering North Berwick, so for now the town operates under the standard national licensing rules alone: hosts must be registered and licensed, but converting a home into a full-time holiday let does not currently require separate planning consent. If the council follows Edinburgh's lead in response to the residents' campaign, that would change. Anyone planning to buy a cottage and let it out full time would need planning permission first, and existing unlicensed operators would face a faster route to enforcement. Hosts already active in the town would be wise to check their license status now rather than wait for a council decision that could tighten the rules with little notice.