Holiday lets and party houses

Holiday lets in a residential setting, if they are badly managed and policed, cause misery for residents with noise, abusive language and behavior, litter and children being exposed to overtly sexual behavior particularly if the let is to hen and stag parties.

Existing noise and anti-social behavior legislation too often fails to help residents.

This is particularly the case in BANEs where numbers of police and local government officers working on Public protection and anti-social behavior are at historic lows.

We think landlords who want to pursue this lucrative business model should as a minimum:

• Have to apply planning permission for change of use
• Pay business rates
• Be held responsible for the behavior of their tenants, preferably with the sort of financial bond system in use elsewhere 

Ideally, we would like to see the introduction of a proper licencing regime for anyone proposing to offer this sort of very short term let.

PACT

The city centre PACT meetings use a lot of police resources, the last meeting had four officers in attendance. This at a time when the police are saying they are significantly under strength.

Given this, we think it is important to pose the question. Does it deliver what residents want and need?

The turn out at PACT meetings is low and mostly the same group of people.

PACT tends to debate, often at length, two types of issue:

1. Very specific local concerns which probably would be better reported by using other processes such as 101.
2. Very large complex issues such as begging and street drink or the night time economy. These issues are rarely soluble by police action alone but other agencies rarely attend. There is almost never time to discuss them in any detail and the meeting is rarely given enough information to make an informed judgement about priorities.

The second type of issue is often being discussed in more detail in other forums and requires a much more deliberative discussion to arrive at any meaningful conclusions.

We think the time has come to scrap PACT and look at creating better reporting systems and more multi-agency and more deliberative forums.