Many UK councils limit short-term rentals to 90 nights per year. Miss the limit and you risk losing permission to let. Here is how to track it accurately.
If you rent out a property in London as a short-term holiday let, you can do so for a maximum of 90 nights per calendar year without planning permission. This rule was introduced by the Deregulation Act 2015 and applies to the entire Greater London area.
Exceed 90 nights and you are technically operating an unlicensed change of use — a planning breach that can result in enforcement action from your local council, fines, and in serious cases, an enforcement notice requiring you to stop letting the property entirely.
It sounds simple, but in practice it catches a surprising number of hosts — particularly those managing multiple properties or those who did not realise the clock was ticking from the first night of their first booking.
The 90-day rule applies to entire home short-term lets in Greater London. It covers all 32 London boroughs plus the City of London.
Key points to understand:
The rule applies to the address, not the owner. If you own multiple properties in London, each property has its own separate 90-day allowance. Exceeding the limit at one property is not mitigated by being well within it at another.
It only applies to entire home lets. Renting a spare room in your primary residence while you are living there is not subject to the same rule — the host presence exception applies.
The 90 days reset on 1 January each year. There is no rolling 12-month period — it is a strict calendar year count.
Business and corporate lets may be treated differently depending on the nature of the arrangement. Seek specialist advice if you are operating in that territory.
The 90-day limit is a London-specific statutory provision. Outside London, the rules vary considerably by local authority, and the landscape is evolving rapidly.
Notable examples of non-London STR regulation:
Edinburgh introduced STR licensing in 2022 and requires planning permission for change of use in designated control zones, which include much of the central city. Hosts operating without a licence in Edinburgh face significant penalties.
Cotswolds and other National Park areas have Article 4 directions in some locations that remove permitted development rights for short-term let conversions. This means planning permission may be required even for stays well under 90 nights.
Cornwall and other popular coastal and rural destinations are actively developing STR licensing frameworks. The situation is changing quickly — hosts in these areas should check their local council website regularly.
Scotland has introduced a national licensing scheme for all short-term lets that differs from the English approach — Scottish hosts must check the specific licensing requirements for their local council.
Every night a guest stays at your property counts toward your total. This includes bookings made via Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, or any other platform, as well as direct bookings you manage yourself and bookings through your own website.
Nights where the property is blocked for maintenance, your own personal use, or simply left empty do not count. Only nights where paying guests are actually staying contribute to the tally.
The platforms themselves track this: Airbnb will automatically block further bookings for a London listing once it reaches 90 booked nights in a calendar year — unless the host has verified planning permission to exceed this limit with Airbnb.
One trap hosts fall into is partial night counting. If a guest checks in on the evening of December 31st and their stay runs into January, only the nights falling in each respective year count for that year. The check-in night counts for December, the remaining nights count for January. This can affect year-end compliance calculations.
Many hosts attempt to track their night count manually — a spreadsheet updated after each booking. The problems compound quickly:
It relies on you remembering to update it every time a booking is confirmed, modified, extended, or cancelled. Any gap in this habit creates inaccuracy.
It does not automatically account for booking modifications. If a guest extends their stay by two nights, those extra nights must be manually added to your count.
If you use multiple booking platforms, you need to consolidate data from all of them into one place. Missing a single booking source means your count is wrong.
It gives you no forward view. You need to know not just how many nights have been used so far, but how many are available for the rest of the year before you commit to future bookings.
It is easy to lose track during peak season when bookings arrive quickly and administrative tasks accumulate.
LetPilot tracks your cumulative night count per property automatically, across all booking sources. Because all bookings — from Airbnb, Booking.com, direct bookings, and any other channel — flow into LetPilot via channel sync or direct API, the system has a complete picture of every guest night at every property.
The STR compliance dashboard shows nights used year-to-date for each property, nights remaining before the 90-day limit, an alert threshold you can set at any point (many hosts set a warning at 75 nights to give themselves advance notice), and a projected date of limit based on the current booking pace.
When you approach your limit, LetPilot flags it prominently so you can make informed decisions about accepting further bookings or blocking the calendar for the remainder of the year.
If you want to operate as a holiday let beyond 90 nights per year in London, you need planning permission for a change of use. Since the introduction of Use Class C5 (short-term let use) in 2024, this means applying to change from C3 (residential) to C5.
The planning application process involves pre-application advice from the local planning authority, a formal planning application with supporting documentation, a public consultation period, and a decision typically within eight weeks. The likelihood of permission being granted varies considerably by borough and by the specific characteristics of the property and its location. Seek advice from a planning consultant with STR experience before assuming permission will be granted.
Good records protect you if you are ever challenged by a council enforcement officer. Retain a booking log showing all guest stays, dates, and source platform; copies of booking confirmations; and documentation of any non-guest nights such as maintenance periods and personal use.
LetPilot's activity log and booking records serve as this documentation — every booking is time-stamped and retained. If you ever need to demonstrate compliance, you have a complete, exportable record. The data can be downloaded in a format suitable for submitting to a council as evidence of your night count and compliance with the 90-day limit.