Revisit a Press Release

It's interesting to revisit a press release that went out to the media in early November 2022. That's because at that time we were being told that this was 'a mountain being made out of a molehill'.

The impending decimation of a modest, but very important part of Edinburgh’s success as a festival city is about to have terrible repercussions on real people, their ability to make ends meet and the capital’s capacity to effectively operate as a cultural venue

With so many now deeply uncertain for their futures and livelihoods it's telling how little traction it got at the time.

Let's hope our press and politicians take more heed now we see the true effects of poorly set out legislation and some Councils seeking to use this as a pretext for shutting down operators.

Edinburgh City plans for short stay licensing will decimate capital's capacity to deliver festivals in 2023.

WED 3rd November: The impending decimation of a modest, but very important part of Edinburgh’s success as a festival city is about to have terrible repercussions on real people, their ability to make ends meet and the capital’s capacity to effectively operate as a cultural venue in 2023.

Background

My name is Ralph. I returned to my home town of Edinburgh having worked in London and then Dublin in 2003. But, as is typical in life, circumstances change and with a young family, my flat in the city was no longer suitable. So I used it as a short stay holiday let. By 2011 my wife and I owned and operated three registered S/C Units in the city’s New Town and Grassmarket. When we started there was no Airbnb and, to this day, we have never used the platform to market our S/C Units.

We may be one of very few small, local, S/C operations that divines a path through the double whammy of, on the one hand, city planning changes that are being applied retrospectively to self-caterers of many years that have never encountered a single complaint, and on the other, new Short Stay Licensing rules. Both are being implemented by the city. Both are doubling down on effectively making long-time operators unable to continue. The goalposts have been moved and hard luck to anyone who falls foul of the new rules and huge additional costs.

The implications

Right now it seems extremely likely that significant numbers of existing operators will find it impossible to legitimately trade once Licensing comes into force. Given the current proposed rules set by both planning and licensing, the numbers of S/C operations in the city centre will drop massively. As the personal stories below highlight, these are real people with lives and responsibilities who are about to be hounded out of their careers, in some cases after working for years and investing major sums of their own money to be part of Edinburgh’s local hospitality sector.

The Festivals

Putting aside the human tragedy of what is unravelling before us, neither the Scottish Government nor the City of Edinburgh, has apparently grasped that the very modest true size of self-catering operations in the city hits well above its weight in terms of impact on the capital’s ability to deliver a world-leading cultural destination.

One major venue operator puts it in stark terms. They require 60,000 bed nights to function during the festival and this disproportionately relies on Self Catering as performers and ancillary staff that flood the city cannot and do not want to live in a hotel room for the duration of their stay. This means that even a modest reduction in available apartments will dissuade acts from attending. No acts mean no entertainment. No entertainment means venues will not operate. Venues not operating means no cultural footfall to the city and the significant sums of revenue this in turn generates.

The Outcome

Real people are now imminently about to be very personally affected by a slow-motion car crash of poorly thought-out legislation brought in to ‘control’ self-catering in Scotland and Edinburgh Council’s subsequent application of those laws which are almost certainly guaranteed to hugely affect the Festival city in ways that our political class is yet to grasp.

Edinburgh has a wealth of human capital which is about to be devastated by ill planned interventions which were predicated on the flimsiest of evidence, but will result in real-world tragedy for residents, businesses and the festivals for years to come.