Agenda item - Chair's Communications

13.1    The Chair gave the following communication:

Today we only have one formal agenda item which is an update on City Plan. At our October meeting, we discussed the City Plan refresh and agreed that scrutiny should play a role at key stages in the development of the new plan. Today we are being asked to note the work that has been done to date, following the initial consultation and looking at the next steps. 

On the agenda, we also have a short presentation by Steve Tremlett on the Heritage Strategy, which we will be looking at later in the year. I have asked for an introduction to the topic so that members can get a good understanding of it in advance.  

Lastly, I would like to have a discussion about the topic for our next Task & Finish Group.  

Before we begin, I would like to give you an update on the work of our last Task & Finish Group on short-term lets:

We all know how long we’ve collectively been talking about STLs – I’ve been going on about them for more than 6 years, and certainly it wasn’t a new subject then. In fact, the recent TFG we did on this isn’t even the first scrutiny deep dive on the subject, since there was one 11 or 12 years ago. Added to that, LAs here and in other tourist areas have been doing Notices of Motion and lobbying successive governments for various ‘asks’ pretty much since the extraordinary rise of the internet booking platforms began a couple of decades ago.

And, following on from our working group and the report we finalised earlier this year, there remains no magic wand that we can wave to transform the thorny STLs vs housing picture overnight, and the conversation continues. However the report is, I think, a really worthwhile piece of work, the recommendations we made were recently passed by cabinet – obviously with all the usual caveats that change will be painstakingly arrived at rather than magicked into being, but passed nonetheless.

And, things do finally seem to be moving forward nationally at last, too – all three of the national operators we spoke to during our work – DCMS, MHCLG and York MP Rachael Maskell asked to see copies of our report when it was done, and we duly complied. All were very complementary about it, and if nothing else, the report seems to have ensured that B&H is now part of the national conversation.

I was invited up to Westminster to a committee about Rachael Maskell’s private members bill on this subject, and I should add that there are now TWO such bills - Ben Maguire MP, the Lib Dem MP for North Cornwall, has tabled one too, and whether or not both are in the end timed out by the brutal PMB process, MHCLG are talking to Rachael and others about possible changes in regulatory powers in the most affected areas that will help cities like B&H and York manage both their tourist economies and their housing crises more effectively.

Also in the works, DCMS are hoping to have a light-touch (but mandatory) national registration scheme up and running as early as 2026, and invited our own Helen Gregory and Julia Gallagher to a meeting to discuss what it might contain, as well as inviting the council to be part of the software testing for the next phase. The briefing note they provide on this was extremely interesting, and although we and other towns and cities would probably prefer more powers, along the lines of the ones in the private members bills, even the huge boost in data to local authorities that would come from this scheme would be enormously helpful to us as a city.